


Baby, You're a Rich Man

by FountainPenguin



Category: Fairly OddParents
Genre: Abandonment, Animal Behavior, Arguments, Assorted ancestors of Gary and Betty, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Kissing, Awkward boss-employee relationships, Backstory, Capture myopathy, Chewing-on-arm self-harm, Convoluted magic systems, Cravings for praise, Dehydration, Desperation, Facing your past, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Head smacking, Insect biology, Jealous rivalry, Kansas, Loneliness, Magical bars, Magical court cases, Magical pheromones, Neglectful father-son relationships, Overworked assistants, Pixies, Sanderson never stops talking, Scary black kittens, Semi-Immortals vs. Mortality, Separation Anxiety, Struggles of caring for a human child, Thunderstorms, Will o' the wisp ex-girlfriends, Wing injuries, Wolbachia pipientis bacteria, Worldbuilding, anti-fairies - Freeform, lots of singing, mention of Original character deaths, miniature golf, painful memories, too much candy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2019-07-01 04:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 81,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15766848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FountainPenguin/pseuds/FountainPenguin
Summary: First-person Sanderson POV; takes place following the opening scene of "School's Out! The Musical."It's September of 1965. H.P. and Sanderson, neither of whom has ever had to look after a human child before, struggle across Kansas on their way home to Pixie World with their semi-kidnapped baby clown in hand. And without any magic to speak of, of course. The journey will be long, freckled with greedy humans, flirtatious Anti-Fairies, frightened godkids, and uncomfortable encounters with ex-girlfriends and ex-mother figures that both H.P. and Sanderson would rather forget.





	1. Dustfinger v. Cadence von Strangle

****

_**Dustfinger v. Cadence von Strangle:** A Guardian need not be separated from their angel if it is determined the angel has an utter dependency upon their current or former Guardian(s) that would render the angel entirely unable to function and/or physically care for themselves if separation should occur._

* * *

When I was hardly two thousand and five hundred years old, the Head Pixie used to line us - all five of us back then - in his office back at Wish Fixers, where the cushy chairs swallowed our tiny feet. He'd flick the starpiece on the end of his wand, and we'd pass the afternoon up on our knees, scribbling in all the tax reports and nutrition labels and instruction manuals that the fairies and the elves and the gnomes and the brownies and the will o' the wisps considered themselves too good to bother with on their own.

Work-wise, it was all the same sorts of tasks we did now. Bayard and I have been slipping our recipe for acorn muffins into the Delegating Administrative Rules of the Known Universe for the last twenty-five millennia, and no one's ever called us on it. Would you believe that? Literally nobody will care if there are twenty Page 486s in the official German edition, or that the entire second half of the Icelandic ones are actually in Danish (To be fair, a high majority of the huldufólk can't read anyway; likely they're too busy throwing parties around the midsummer holidays and trading their own children for cows to take the time to educate themselves). It's the most widely-distributed piece of writing in all of existence, and not even worth dumping blackmail in. Longwood's tried. I've never seen a copy in my life that didn't contain a life-sized drawing of two interesting but utterly pointless square flower pots of daisies sprawled across pages thirty-two and thirty-three. What, has no one ever started from the beginning before? You can't expect me to believe all readers open it directly in the middle.

Back in those earlier days, H.P. would pace back and forth behind us, firing the occasional blast of magic over our heads just to see if we'd flinch, and that was the real test. A few weeks later he'd be in front of us, and a week after that we wouldn't have any distractions from the fireworks at all. In the afternoons, we'd go down the hall for bagels. Those of us he was most impressed with would get to fill our water cups from the dispenser like real employees, and we could get a new pencil already shiny and pre-sharpened. The rest had to pour half their day's paycheck back to the grand champ (Who was, and I'm boasting, yours truly far more often than it wasn't). In the last hundred years, I'd spent most of that money on new records for my gramophone. I think I went through a European cave-painting period in my 244k-thirties too.

Carrots and sticks, I'd realized now that I was nearing my 253,119th birthday. You either grit your teeth and stuck it out or, like Caudwell, resigned your sad soul to an existence of fleeing for cover at the  _fwiiiip!_  and  _ttchrrrrshh!_  of notebook pages. We Pixies were raised to be still, calculated, calm. It all got so it wasn't a competition any longer. We performed our copying and filing and management duties and respected one another as though we were all the same.

So, with the knowledge that I wasn't much for flinching now firmly set in your mind, you'll understand why it was almost f… funny how just earlier that September day in 1965, I had accepted a mute fate of being beaten and scratched by a great pink lizard (crossed with a buffalo and a helicopter, and I regret approving that request with every fiber in me), but when the sun began to set, I was much more offended by the shrieking hunk of metal that barreled into the roof of our brown pick-up and skipped away across the cornfield. The steering wheel wrenched to the right on its own beneath my fingers.

H.P. and I screamed together, in that halfhearted way of pixies. We whipped around and around and around in perhaps two dozen circles. I slammed jaw-first against the dashboard, then bashed into the window and oozed down into my seat. H.P.'s head thumped into the ceiling. That bent his pointed cap even more than the Tooth Fairy's breakfast platter had. Dirt cascaded down the windshield. Wheels screamed with hot rubber (we were well over that old victory speed). Then we plowed backwards into the corn. The truck stopped spinning, but the world didn't. "I'm okay!" someone yelled, and it frustrated me that I couldn't identify whether it was H.P.'s voice, or my own. Particularly when the next sound to pierce the ringing in my ears was him muttering my name.

"Sir?"

He was upsi- No; I, of course, had to be the one upside-down, because that was wrong. One leg, I think, was twisted over a sort of… bar. I wasn't certain how. Backwards? Maybe. Either way, it probably wasn't supposed to bend at that angle. Hot fuzz roared like sand beneath my skin, and I now had an entire arm just sleeping on the job like it didn't care we had work to do. A determined swat didn't wake the nerves. My cowlick began to prickle up beneath the saliva H.P. had used to press it down. The sharp square tips of my wasp-like wings dangled by my ears.

 _Too bright_ , I thought.  _Too bright_. I pressed my knuckles to my eyelids. My shades had tumbled off in the crash. Though my vision lilted with swirls, I saw them in H.P.'s hand as he waited, on his knees on the padded brown seat, for me to orient myself to some degree. While he sighed, he pushed his own cracked glasses higher on his nose with one forefinger.

"Only you could possibly get your leg stuck through a steering wheel, Sanderson."

Once I realized where I was, untangling myself turned out not to be difficult. But I couldn't get my wings up before my chest slapped into the floor, jarring like a dropped microphone. I might have even heard the echo. H.P. handed me my shades as I climbed onto the bench beside him.

"Do you have any idea what the" - I hesitated, then went with the emotionally-neutral phrase 'cause of that event' - "was, sir?"

"Mm… I know that something slammed into the truck from behind. It appeared to be some sort of boulder, or time capsule delivered through a wormhole."

Keeping my lips drawn together, I nodded. It must have been. H.P. would know things like that. He placed his hands on the edge of the open window and peered into the corn. There was a rustle out there. For a few wingbeats I listened to it, but I was more concerned with the state the truck might be in.

I dropped the keys into the inner pocket of my suit coat, right where my star-capped pen would typically reside, and opened the door. Then I nearly plummeted straight to the ground. Clinging to the handle, I could only watch as dirt and fields spiraled into one before me. I removed my shades again and scrubbed my eyes. "I hope the engine is still intact. That could prove difficult to fix without the use of magic."

He watched me pick my way towards the front of the truck. "I believe we were only clipped, Sanderson."

"Fairly-sized clipping. The mother of the lizallicopter, no doubt, come to" - I forced open the hood, only for it to clatter back in my face - "exact her revenge for what we did to her babies once Cupid plugged them full of love arrows. Or the… Or some of the Fairies have gotten tipsy on pink lemonade and licorice again, and have rediscovered their passion for shooting stars at passersby.  _Hihh_!"

"I don't imagine so. The capsule looked as though it might be white. And it could prove useful to us." H.P. hovered above the waving stalks of corn, one hand up to deflect the setting sun's glare from his glasses. Wind whistled. The season shifted colder with every passing night. After a moment he said, "It landed in the field."

"You aren't dizzy, sir," I managed. The hood  _clang_ ed back into place, and I let myself dip with it.

"I've become accustomed to my swivel chair. Are your wings more able than they would seem right now?"

I knew very little about motors and cars anyhow; I'd given up on trying to study the engine and only just sat down in the blurry road. At H.P.'s urging, I flapped corn dust from the veins until I rose a few inches above the ground. Stiff, but functional. We may have had our starpieces revoked, but there remained plenty of magic in the surrounding air for us to both remain alive and get by with the simplest of luxuries. Hovering with my undersized wings was always one such miracle. And, if I was lucky, sticking the front of my hair back into its usual curled tuft of black grass would be too.

I wasn't lucky. I blamed style-challenged anti-fairies.

My boss was often one for unnecessary dawdling, but never when a novel stimuli had just captured his curiosity. He hadn't even checked to ensure I was stable before he'd flown off through the plants. Still readjusting my shades, I beat my dizzy way after him.

We weren't in deep before we ran across the object's trail. A sweeping row of golden stalks lay flattened in a scraped half-pipe of mud. Like a red carpet, they welcomed us to the slight mound where our target had finally ground to a stop. It was picturesque; the setting sunlight behind us glinting against the metal casing, with a distant barn visible as a faint smudge of scarlet among the browning corn.

The rising smoke wasn't an unhelpful clue of its landing point, either.

So it wasn't a fallen star from the Fairy World fields. I looked at H.P. He lifted one brow above the rims of his glasses, and then we approached together. My knowledge on the subject was limited, but the fallen object seemed to bear resemblance to the cute little rockets that were becoming more and more popular among the humans in recent decades. A silly thing, not too much larger than the duffel bags that had been such a common sight in Las Vegas. Its white body bore cheerful stripes of red and blue.

I waited for an  _Okay_  to pull back that I did not receive. H.P. twitched one summoning finger in my direction. So it was, hovering close enough to one another that our glasses clicked and our wingtips brushed, we made our soft approach. A front panel began to draw itself upward on its own.

The scratch across my right cheek burned beneath my bandage. I was not particularly in the mood for another fight. Not after being deprived of my starpiece, and especially not without a proper warranty signed and filed in my middle-favorite cabinet. I narrowed my eyes.

But, the miniature rocket contained no furious lizallicopter. Not even a mildly-content lizallicopter. No, no; the universe had responded to H.P.'s absent-minded plea for an impressionable pawn in quite the favorable way, and had personally mailed us a baby, packaged up and hand-delivered at our feet.

A human baby. A human baby, splashed with the white and pink make-up of clowns (including a poofy shock of hair dyed in ginger) and bundled up inside a thin yellow blanket like an anti-pixie's jacket. Either there were red spots on that too, or my vision was still blurry from our crash. The moment it saw us puzzling over it, the infant lit up in a single-toothed grin. I wouldn't, I decided then, forget that slight chill down my back when its odd magenta eyes locked onto mine even through my shades.

"Sanderson?" H.P.'s own eyes made him appear nearly as giddy as the child when he turned his head. "I think this could be the start of a beautiful new thirty-seven-year plan."

Ignoring my war flashbacks, I checked for permission and received the  _Go ahead_  signal. The baby never lost its smile as I slid my hands beneath its thin body and raised it over my head. There was a child. And I had it. We were back in business. This was, officially, the best thing to happen to me in the last twenty-four hours.

It was H.P. who started laughing first - leadership was rather his thing - but I joined in with him. You didn't leave your boss to do these things all on his own, if you valued your paycheck. And, if we're stripping down to honesty here, it was fu-

-expected. H.P. gave me one of those tired smiles as we laughed. The baby picked up on it all and broke into cooing, and then the moment was shattered by a lowing, " _Paaaaaaapppaaaa_!"

My hand went for my pen. The pen that wasn't there. H.P. had been raised among fairies, and his first instinct to hearing the call was to morph himself into an inconspicuous bird or field mouse. But, again, Cupid and the Tooth Fairy had stripped us of our starpieces before leaving us with the truck and a small wad of bills. Without a way to channel the boost of magic he needed, he simply dropped to the ground.

"Sir?" I tucked the infant in the crook of my arm and reached down my hand.

"There's a human in this field." He stood up and started brushing dirt from his suit and wings. "I'll take a moment to search the, ah, capsule for anything that we might exploit. Take the clown and head back for the tru-"

_Krra-BLMM!_

Mud exploded in the corn some ways off to my right. H.P.'s wings snapped out behind him. Shrieking crows scattered in a blur of feathers. I dropped the baby.

I dropped the entire baby.

We're all lucky that H.P. was already below me among the dirt and flattened corn. He caught the child in his arms and blinked once, slowly. "Shotgun shot." To me, "Welcome home."

I couldn't believe I had actually dropped a baby.

"What the-? Papa, Papa, look! Look, maybe it's not really birds! There's a, there's a car, see. Maybe it's those 'drunk teenage brats' you were talkin' about, huh? Y'think it's them?"

H.P.'s forehead creased with a few lines more than usual. "Ah, now that explains who has the gun. A human child. That's the worst type of human there is."

The infant clown, overwhelmed by the shattering noise and unfamiliarity of the field and us, without any warning began to wail.  _Not in front of the kid, H.P._  I thought, biting my lip. I couldn't see the offending human from here. Was he barring our way back to the truck? Maybe if I were just a smidgen higher…

"Get down here, Sanderson."

"He's actually trying to shoot us, boss," I mumbled, not budging. My wings skipped a beat. Generally speaking, we pixies liked the Bit Bridge for its wonderful cost-effectiveness; a slide down was worth saving energy on the  _ping_ s to various business locations throughout surrounding Kansas. Plus, it made an excellent location for picnics, as when it came to human eyes, the Bridge only rendered itself visible to registered fairy godkids or the occasional bootstrapper whom we thought we could lend a little support to without attracting any attention from Jorgen von Strangle.

So having pixies roam around Kansas and stray into farmland wasn't anything atypical- this wasn't nearly the first time the humans had gone hunting for wings and caps to hang above their mantles. They'd call us gnomes, mostly. So I'd heard. Had I witnessed the slur much myself? Heck. I loathed the rural landscape. I'd heard too many horror stories around the first-floor water cooler that told of trigger-happy farmers confusing curious pixies with hungry crows, so I'd stuck to urban Kansas since I was two hundred twenty thousand ninety-nine. And I'd thought obsidian spears and feathered arrows had been bad enough.

"He wants to shoot us, sir."

"Sanderson, you're immortal. At the end of the day, you're going to be perfectly fine."

"Magical beings can be killed by phys-"

"I asked you to get down here."

I landed with a soft thump, but my wings wouldn't stay folded. Every rustle of corn stalks could be the creep of human footsteps. The stray chirp of an insect, the cocking of a gun. We pixies liked to pretend we'd last forever, and magic couldn't do us in, but I knew of no creature who could withstand a whizzing bullet directly between the eyes. If through a miracle they did, I doubted they'd be the same again.

"Papa, do you hear that crying sound? Do you think it's them? Where are you, Papa?"

The baby had chosen that moment to break into howls. The last few of the crows decided that this field wasn't worth it after all, and took flight. Another  _crack!_  went through the air. A squawk, a downward spiral of dark feathers, a thump a mere dozen feet away. An ecstatic burst of noise and another cry for Papa to praise the success of the little monster he had created. I covered my ears, wings beginning to whirr.

H.P. caught me by the tie and dragged my forehead against his. "Sanderson, look me in the eyes when I'm addressing only you. I am over seven hundred and forty-four thousand years old. I know the trick to getting out of this mess, and that would be to move at a steady pace and remain very low." He stuck his thumb in the baby's mouth, shushing it for now but probably not for long. "The child with the gun views his own kind as his equals, and regards birds as a nuisance. So we need to stay low, lest he spot us floating."

A face of practiced calm didn't prevent my scattered thoughts from bouncing every which way inside my head. If I'd had a way to channel magic from the energy field, it would have turned from my usual calm purple into green. But, as I always did, I placed my trust at H.P.'s feet and nodded. "Yes, sir."

He eased his hand off my tie, still studying my face for any show of emotion. "Very good. Now, he's at the truck and we left no physical path for him to follow through the corn. It will take him at least a moment to find us. Wings down. We're walking. Stay  _directly_ behind me so we'll sound larger. If he thinks we're human, he'll choose not to harm us. It's easy. Just follow right-  _ow_." H.P. stared down at the child nestled in the crook of his arm, exasperated. "Snippy little brat. Just like a pixie."

"Mama, Mama, go wake up Papa! Look, someone's in the corn again and- and see, I think they, maybe they crashed drunk or something- d'ya think?"

"This way, Sanderson, to the left. We'll come out on the opposite side of the field from the truck, unfortunately, but we can't afford to end up too near the farmhouse as the reinforcements come trickling out."

I hesitated, eyeing the still-smoldering wreck of rocket.

"Sanderson."

The baby wouldn't have been left with nothing but a faded photograph if whoever had sent him hadn't thought it was important. Snatching it up, I squeezed between the corn stalks after H.P. He shot me a glare over his shoulder.

"Gather your nerves under control, Sanderson, and stop that fluttering. I said, we're walking."

The ring of his words, or the slice of rough and crunchy leaves, or a combination of the two prompted another round of crying from our little human charge. I didn't hear another gunshot, but somebody behind us hollered for his papa. I wondered if H.P. noticed that we were both moving a little faster than "walking".

"Humans, nasty humans," my boss muttered, swatting stalks aside as he hurried through. Old husks and grass and straw crunched against dirt in places where the tip of his shoe might brush. "Show them how to weave a proper water basket, and they'll trap three of your assistants beneath it as soon as you go for a drink. I don't care  _how_  many holes it was riddled with- the universe should not have been allowed to classify that rubbish as a butterfly net. And they're no better as the centuries pass, humans. Stubbornly blind and inherently selfish. They'll attempt to burn you at the stake for use of witchcraft, Sanderson- Did you know that? And if one should  _ping_  to safety, then it's a race to hunt him down again so they might close their long fingers around his scrawny neck."

I kept hard at his wingtips,  _Mmhm_ ing after every pause, but my eyes were on the photograph. In three shades of gray, a mother clown and father clown waved back at me, with their clown baby balanced in the father's wide palm.

"Where do you imagine the kid originated from, sir?"

"I believe we passed a circus train on the road a few minutes before we were hit. I would presume from there. He looks to be a clown."

H.P. was not the fastest pixie in the business- that prize probably went to Wilcox in falcon form. And, since identifying the items that he did not, in fact, like to have spread over water coolers and file deliveries had long since become second or third nature to me, I stopped talking and focused instead on wriggling through the plants. One leaf nicked my thumb. I didn't see what color my blood had turned.

We had probably rid ourselves of the trigger-happy child; we appeared to be faring well enough, even as we ran. So it turned out there was even less reason to bring up H.P.'s not-walking than the cynical side of my brain had prepared counterarguments for. Court adjourned, case dismissed. We were safe.

I turned the gray photo around so my boss would see it if he looked back at me. He didn't, but the baby's chin rested on his shoulder, and his crying seemed to ebb when he took in the familiar faces.

"I was thinking we should name him Slater," said H.P., zig-zagging between the golden stalks. "After Samuel Slater. You remember him, don't you? He had those nice tin buttons on his coat. I gave Longwood a promotion for keeping an eye on him and his factory deal."

I remembered the part about the promotion.

"That's not what his parents wanted to name him, sir. Look, it's- it's written right here on the back:  _We love you with all our hearts, Flappy Bob_."

H.P. pulled up with a harsh flap. I slammed into his wings. He turned around. "Flappy Bob," he repeated. A faint red began to creep over his neck. "Every name in the wide reachings of the universe exists, and they go with  _Flappy Bob_."

I picked the photograph from the dirt and offered it to the baby. Wishful imaginings, perhaps, but a twinkle seemed to spark in his wide pink eyes as I squeezed it beneath his chubby hand. "Mama?"

"He can say 'Mama', boss."

"I can say,  _His name will be Slater_." H.P. drew in his wings in a decisive manner and returned to forging a path through the field.

"Wasn't I once as small as Flappy is, H.P.?"

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it is pointlessly obvious and there is no useful information to be gleaned from such a discussion. You always do this, Sanderson.  _Boss, can we please name the newborn Markwell instead of Penham_?  _Boss, where should I hang this plaque you wanted me to make that inexplicably reads the name I wanted rather than yours_?  _Boss, I started a petition to rename the company restaurant 'Heartbreak Hotel' for no conceivable reason other than my being passive-aggressive about wanting to attend the Elvis Presley concert this weekend despite the fact that I'm supposed to be giving the most important presentation thus far in Pixie history in front of the Fairy Council that same evening_." He skirted a swarming hill of red ants. "Examining the rocket was explicitly my idea. I gave  _you_  a good name, didn't I?"

"My first name is Mister. You gave all of us the first name Mister."

"Did you want to share my ridiculous surname of Whi-"

"Who said that?" cried a light voice. The little human with the big gun. We fell silent. H.P. stood frozen with Flappy Bob in one hand, a bent stalk of corn in the other. I started to back away.

"Sir, we'll make smaller targets if we split up…!"

H.P. probably would have given me the 'safety in numbers' line there, but he got distracted when Flappy reached up, shoved his fingers into his nose, and curled his sharp nails in tight. I figured that was just as well. Two pixies and a baby didn't make for a very big number.

"You and I will stick together, Sanderson. I believed I'd made that (Shove off, imp) concept clear. I won't have you turn your back on me- We are not finished with this conversation."

He checked his rising voice. "What's so wrong with the name Slater? No one would ever trust someone named Flappy with their tax forms. Is he going to sign all his checks 'Flappy Bob'? Will there be court cases that read  _Flappy Bob v. Fairy World_? Are we going to have to attend his elementary school parent-teacher conferences and sit around the horseshoe table asking how well  _Flappy Bob_  is getting along with the other children?"

Well…

I tried to take the photograph back from the baby, but Flappy screwed up his eyes and tightened his grip and would simply have none of it. So I latched onto the opportunity and shrugged. "It appears he likes it, H.P."

"Hmm." H.P. wiped mud from the lapel of his suit onto his thumb. "I suppose allowing him to keep that photo might relieve him of a  _few_  restless wonderings about his past, which certainly won't be a negative thing for us. I will have to consider the full consequ-"

"Who said that?" came the voice, again. Perhaps slightly deeper than I'd realized. Suddenly it was in front of us, and sounding rather like the one that had called "I'm okay!" back at the crash. And much… much closer…

H.P. jerked to the right and I dove left as the ears of corn ahead of us were swiped to the side. The perpetrator was a human drake, short and brown, dressed in spandex of the same red, blue, and white pattern as Flappy's rocket. As he stepped out before us, we watched him draw in a great gulp of the air, the same way I might suck up a dish of cheese fondue if someone were foolish enough to leave it unattended on the counter at Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda's 9,000th anniversary. That… that being a hypothetical example, of course.

He bore no gun, nor was he a child. Not so long as he sported that mustache. There I was, barely three feet tall, leering up at a wiry, well-muscled human drake easily twice my height. I could see my reflection in the helmet on his head- a dome that somewhat resembled H.P.'s, if not for the blinding way it bounced the last trails of red sunlight into my face. I pushed my shades closer to my nose. My jaw tightened. Saliva squeezed beneath the chip in my front tooth as my tongue pressed forward.

There was more than one hunter in the field.

So, here's a multi-million blockbuster idea for Fairywood: We'll strip two pixies of magic and abandon them on the open road without so much as a loophole to defend themselves. It's out of our hands, right? They're old enough to look out for themselves, right? Won't be our fault if they die, right? Oh, I ask you…

We looked at one another in a bewildered triangle. A triangle that became a rhombus when the freckle-faced little drake pressed his way out of the corn behind H.P. Together, two sets of human eyes switched from me to him. I watched the dark human's jaw slacken.

"Flappy Bob?"

I knew Da Rules. You couldn't help that when you were the one to head the Nordic Translation Project (Again, my apologies to Finland for it having taken me thirty years to realize I'd spelled  _hääyöaieuutinen_  four different ways throughout). Section N, Article 17, Paragraph 10 (Paragraph 11 if it was one of the copies with half the preamble to the American Constitution thrown in), Line 2: If another member of the planet's dominant species discovers the existence of one's fairy godparent(s); clause two, and associates them with their appropriate godchild; clause three, and reveals their existence before the world through verbalization, sign language, or writing (Childhood drawings were ruled immune from this two years back in  _Porter v. Starshine Kiss_ , almost immediately after the decision of  _Snow v. Carmichael_ , stating that any child currently in possession of Fairies who knowingly reveals the existence of another's godparents would lose their own as well), then shall the godparent(s) in question be summoned back to Fairy World for a furlough period [sic] lasting no more than forty-five (45) hours at the discretion of the current Keeper of the Rules - and yes, there is an 'e' in  _current_  that does not resemble an 'a' whatsoever - after which they shall be reassigned to one or more (though not exceeding three) children of the planet's dominant species who fall into the following parameters… On, on, on.

The short version is, we pixies were  _always_  getting landed with the smallest core to swallow. If we'd have been born full fairies, H.P. and I could potentially have named Flappy our godson right there, so long as we followed the standard introductory procedure outlined in Section B, Subsection A. Easy way out, you say, and you're right.

That wasn't even the best part. According to page 1,691, Amendment TT, also referred to as Utter Dependency Clause (as determined in the rulings of  _Dustfinger v. Cadence von Strangle_ ), Flappy wouldn't even be stripped away from us afterward. We'd be  _ping_ ed -  _poof_ ed, more accurately - up to that big poolside resort in the sky, could keep the baby, and Jorgen would deal with all the messy details of memory erasure…

BUT NO, somebody high and grand up there had the brilliant idea to forbid direct wish-granting interference to all non-Fairy beings with even a lick of magic in their souls because, and I'm not paraphrasing, the Fairies happen to make make better brownies. The groveling, charity-minded doormat Brownies themselves are simply lucky that they're still clinging to the Fairy class by a thread- they'll never participate in anything themselves if they risk winning more gain than a sprinkling of food and drink. Never open a bar in brownie country, that's my advice; if it isn't an absolute necessity for the individual, they aren't interested. They hardly understand mating.

Don't look sideways at us for not participating. I hadn't even finished puberty. And it's not as though we didn't  _try_. Actually, the entire reason the Fairy Council finally agreed to recognize Pixies as a distinct class was because they (correctly) assumed their own kind would win the bake-off, and they hoped to prevent us "corporate folk" from getting in on that action and the tax benefits associated with it. Oh, H.P. hit the  _roof_  when he heard the way they'd timed their decision. Nothing like being handed the golden goose the day before it croaks. The most we got was a scribbled sidenote in Da Rules: Chapter 417, Section F, Subsection O, Amendment I stated that Pixies could select godkids, assign pixies to act as their Guardians, and directly grant their wishes if there should come a day when fewer than six children on a planet had fairy godparents.

Six. Who pulls weird numbers like that out of their hat? I don't know what scenario they expected to bring them to such low numbers, but my money has always been placed on a third Great Magical Plague. So you lose a batch of fairies; it's not as though they're anywhere near extinction. Then you send the pixies down and see if H.P.'s mutation renders us immune, or (I find this the more likely reason) sit back and let it wipe us from existence. As Anti-Cosmo once pointed out with his wandpoint resting between H.P.'s eyes, if we're all genetically identical, we'll fall like dominoes. Problem solved.

Our only other hope is to convince the Fairy Elder to let us buy Fairy World outright from under her crown, really. I'm still scratching behind my neck, wondering why we should have to be lumped into the wish-restriction class when the  _Genies_  managed to slip through the cracks- don't even get me started on them…

So, no, being born into a species incapable of pulling the trick of outing ourselves to the first human to come bumbling along and then kicking back for a two-day all-expenses-paid vacation whenever we lost our starpieces and didn't feel like taking the long way home was not a thing I had ever been bitter about. I'm glad we got that cleared up.

The redhead with the gun lit with a smile in a matter of wingbeats (Really). "Papa, Papa look! Look, I found Grandpa's gnomes!"

"We're pixies!" I shot back at him, thoroughly insulted. Go kiss a brownie librarian and pick up a basic field guide while you're at it, why don't you?

The small drake made a grab for H.P., who finally seemed to realize that he stood at the child's feet. If the Tooth Fairy hadn't crumpled his hat, he'd have lost it. Those spidery fingers closed on empty air. "Flappy," said the darker drake again, reaching out. "Just let me-"

I locked onto his wrist, wrenched it downward, and buried my teeth in the back of his hand. Hey, that's just the Pixie way. He yelped, H.P. vanished into the corn with the baby towards the road, and I plowed face-first in the dirt where I'd been swatted. The smaller drake, who had been racing after H.P., tripped over my back. He squeaked like a rubber ball. I scrambled up, swiping dust from my suit. Then I was off into the field again.

Corn stalks towered in rows like thousands of von Strangles around me. They seemed to crush the last light out of the dusk. Jagged leaves and crispy husks bit my skin, drawing bright pink dots of blood and draining my limited inner store of magic, but  _I would not stop_. That was not a question.

I tried to find a trail of flattened stalks, but a pixie and a baby made for a small team, and there weren't many indications that they'd come this way. Maybe none at all. Had wings sliced through that limp hanging leaf? It was getting harder to tell as even the faint glow of twilight slipped away. I tore my shades off, folded the arms, and stuck them over the collar of my shirt.

"H.P.!"

It was clear that the humans were following hard behind, tripping and cursing and swatting corn from their faces. Both let out a howl for their respective papas. One final crow took flight on my left. It had probably given away my position, but I didn't particularly care. So had my cry; I would sooner place the blame on myself than attribute awareness to the bird. Having the humans against me was enough. The thought that even the local fauna intended to prevent my escape might just crush my resolve to splinters.

I wasn't running - who would when you can float? - but hovering didn't seem to help me fare much better. My wings caught in the stalks. When I moved, they twisted and snagged. Trapped, trapped! On several occasions I had to land in the mud and wriggle backwards, then crawl beneath the curled, rough leaves. Wasting time, wasting time… There were no more signs to suggest whether H.P. had chosen one direction over another. The taste of his imprint signals permeated the energy field from every possible direction. I was flying blind.

"H.P.?" Beat. "Somebody tell me what to do!"

No reply, except for the dark circus freak again. That was what he had to be- some goon from the circus, if he knew Flappy's name and dressed like that. I paused between two columns of corn, tinted blue as night smothered Kansas. I didn't remember the field being so long between the rocket and the truck. Probably, I'd gotten turned around. That was a sobering thought. If only I were higher.

I flapped my wings two times. Three times. Flappy's white make-up, I hoped, might help me spot them in the dark. The star at the top of H.P.'s cap. A rustling of corn. I only needed a little glimp-

 _KRRASswiiip_!

Have you often had the feeling that you've forgotten some very, very crucial detail? Has that detail ever been a child with a shotgun who was born and raised to shoot small, flying creatures out of the sky? If so, congratulations; we'll make a Sanderson out of you yet.

The bullet might have grazed the back of my head. I didn't really feel any  _pain_  so much as a short, sharp burn, like the swing of a hot knife, or a typewriter space bar thrown by a really, really frustrated workmate named Jericho across the conference table. But it was enough to overbalance me. I tipped downwards. My grasping fingers closed on a corn husk, only to burn my palm as I continued in my crashing descent. The second stalk bent under me all the way to the dirt, and maybe snapped at its base. I wasn't sure.

I pulled myself together, licking at my dry lips. Violet sparkles were spattered down my right arm. I strained my wings, but they wouldn't support me. Wings acted as a border between the physical and magical; it took the strength of both to lift one off the ground. As I stared for a few numb seconds at my bloodied arm, it didn't seem as though I ought to have lost enough magic from the bullet wound to render me unable to hover. Not so soon. Had I cut up my back, too, without noticing at the time? Even through my suit and shirt?

Tromping noises, human feet- I couldn't stay here. Unlike the eastern elves, who often seemed to prefer the feel of solid earth despite their wings, walking was a concept I was largely unfamiliar with. I stumbled once, favoring my left side, before I regained my balance. The field couldn't go on much farther.

Loneliness was another impression I had rarely experienced. Really, no matter what H.P. may insist if you asked him. I had my own office, yes, as well as my own apartment, yes, but there were always other pixies just down the hall. We all came to work together, and together we all turned in for the night.

This was different. This- this being alone without H.P., lost in the dark without hearing his voice, downed and trapped and staggering and with humans behind me, not knowing when he'd reappear, pinched my soul into a knot.

I think I was anxious, perhaps?

My wings began to flutter up. My fingers grasped at the tight collar of my shirt. I blinked my eyes.

Then I broke into the open.

The cool air caught me so off guard that I tripped over my own feet and rolled twice down the slight slope and into the dusty road. I came up sitting, my hands braced between my legs, but dizziness soon tipped me on my face. I slumped over, massaging one wrist against my eyes.

"H.P.?" I muttered. Bleary as a selkie for too long out of water, I stared back up the road. The truck stood where we'd left it, brown and spotted with rust and mud, backed into the first couple rows of corn. The windows were still rolled down. As I dragged myself over, I thought I could make out a dent mark on the roof where we'd been hit by Flappy's rocket capsule.

They weren't waiting there for me. Still mostly unable to use my wings, I scrambled up to check for them in the seats. I searched the loading bed. I even ducked beneath the chassis. Oil dripped in silence, and I remembered how dry my mouth was, full of dust and maybe a bit of blood.

A couple of crows had begun to return to the rustling field. Stepping away from the truck, I cupped my hands around my dry mouth. "H.P.! Flappy?"

"His name is Slater!" snapped a voice not too deep in the corn. Another gunshot. Something squealed. A soft object hit the ground.

I stopped moving. So did the cornfield. My wings fell at the same time as my knees and palms. Dirt pierced the scratches along my fingers.

H.P. had survived the lizallicopter attack. Of course he had- nothing touched with magic could kill a magical being. Break and bruise to the point we were pulp, yes. Disintegrate into a smoldering heap of cinders, sure, but never  _kill_. Magic ran through our veins; its power had about as much effect on us as a splash of blood in a human's mouth. Having an opponent force our fagiggly glands to act against our will or being smacked with a warm current of lightning was unpleasant, yes, but we could recover and would always live. Only an object crafted without any sort of enchantment could wipe us from existence.

Bullets weren't magical.

"Oh, smoof."

I knelt there in the road. Maybe for upwards of two minutes. Even if I'd worked under H.P. longer than any of the other pixies had, I wasn't much of a leader. The most innovative idea in my life had come to me only a few months ago, when I'd  _ping_ ed down to visit P.F. Sloan - in disguise, of course - and we'd had the sudden revelation that when you dropped off the ending 'g's,  _coagulating_  could rhyme with  _contemplating_.

If there wasn't official business to be done, H.P. had the attention span of a candle, but my wick was even shorter. I had a habit of using my allotted ration of paperclips as makeshift hooks or needles to sew my clothes rather than for their intended purpose. I liked typewriters for the clicking sound of their keys. I chewed on my hat when I was plotting out graphs. I wrote 'yadda yadda yadda' into legally-binding contracts. My pens were arranged in my drawer by the number of times I'd successfully used them to land a dark dot on the far wall.

I didn't even have a real job. My position as head of the complaints department in a company full of humble drones who worked better than ticking clocks was a joke; I was assigned the occasional project, and I did oversee copying and filing duties and participate in a fair share of the work myself, and it wasn't like I didn't know how to pull together a decent contract or that one should always write paperwork in triplicate (not knowing  _that_  would make me more of a disgrace than Rosencrantz), but mostly I had my own private office because whenever I grew restless, I sang. And I grew restless a lot. H.P. had always known it, and long since given up his attempts to curb the problem. "Just keep the door shut," was his weary advice now. Or had been.

I was a pixie who was kept around for sentimentality's sake. Not because I was particularly efficient. Oh, I worked  _fine_. I completed my tasks and completed them well, so long as someone else was there to keep my attention on it. It wouldn't be the worst thing if I didn't finish; H.P. ensured that most of what passed through my hands was busywork. Expendable. Still, every ounce of myself I poured into the company. I lived it. I cherished it. I'd secure its survival as a whole before my own.

But I was not the kind of pixie one called upon to close a serious business deal. I did not participate in the inner workings of the company, drawing up marketing ideas, accounting, supervising sales and distribution, contacting investors, answering calls, relaying messages, performing administrative duties, following up with Fairies who defaulted on their magic payments, organizing budgets, studying files, sorting mail, managing funds. I'd been assigned to the very fringes. It was an adventure whenever Abernathy asked me to inventory the warehouse stock with him.

On paper, I was the lowest rung on the ladder of customer service. Consumers only met with me when they were left with no other alternative. I was the last line of defense: Anyone who could make it through my office without attempting to beat their head through a wall had certainly earned an audience with the Head Pixie, which was the request I dealt with most often. Without hesitation, he always selected me to accompany him on his excursions beyond Pixie World, less because I held mastery over skills he did not possess and more because leaving me to my own devices for any length of time ran the risk of the company dissolving into a potluck of chirpy music and pink elephants. He'd long grown sick of  _ping_ ing assorted pachyderms and interesting pieces of sculpture back to where they belonged.  _Useful_  and  _desirable_  were two separate concepts entirely, and too often I was neither.

 _Useful_  pixies did not leave Pixie World when the boss too was away. They were trusted to stay behind and manage the corporation. It was why Longwood held the title of vice president, and Sanderson did not. H.P. brought me along on business trips to suggest he held a strength of numbers; to have someone there to watch his back. I served no real purpose aside from acting as another set of eyes. I was merely the cute one who smiled thinly and waved and urged our enemies to relax their guard. And being "the cute one" is hardly a reassurance when those beyond company walls can never quite tell you apart from your coworkers anyway.

It was that simple. I hadn't even returned home to share the news, and the entirety of the Pixie race had fallen to cookie crumbles in my fingers. And, I was too young for offspring of my own. That was a privilege only H.P. had lived long enough to obtain. So this would be a standstill for our species, then, for about the next five hundred thousand years. That long before I'd meet a pixie whose face never scrunched in judgement. My charming people skills tended to quail when run against rows of my own stonewall peers.

I stared into the dark field, chewing on the inside of my cheek each time I heard a peal of laughter from the child or frustrated shout from the dark man. They sounded as though they were getting closer. The small drake undoubtedly still wielded the shotgun. I had the keys to the pickup truck in my pocket and an open road ahead of me. It couldn't be much further to Mushroom Rock and the Bit Bridge- maybe four more hours, or maybe five. I still had to cross the rest of will o' the wisp country, but otherwise, nothing but distance stood between me and home.

With deliberate care, I drew my shades from my collar and slid them back over my eyes. H.P. had worn his gray, star-tipped hat for hundreds of thousands of years since it had been gifted to him. Hundreds of thousands of magical creatures knew that hat and associated it with the leader of pixiekind. Whether succeeding him was my destiny by birthright or Longwood's by rank could be sorted out later;  _someone_  was meant to wear that pointed cap, and I would not be leaving without it.

Without my starpiece in hand, I couldn't channel enough energy from my surroundings to do anything particularly useful.

But magic still ran through my pixie blood, and my pixie blood was leaking pink and purple sparks of it into the air from the back of my head. I could taste it in my nose, and it stirred me to move.  _That_  was something I might could work with, even in a limited fashion. I could taste it in my nose, and it stirred something deep within my core to  _act_ , to  _run out there_ , to  _defend myself_ , to  _stop cowering_  in the dust. All moving energy manifested itself as heat. And when it's starting to cluster around a furious pixie, it needs only a little nudge.

All right. So starting a fire remained out of the question. Of course it would, when I still lacked the ability to float. I could neither  _ping_  across the field nor summon even an object as small as Flappy's photograph to my side, should I have wanted to.

But the important thing was, in that asinine instant, I  _felt_  like I wasn't at the mercy of the world. I didn't  _feel_  like I was alone and directionless. And back then, that was enough to tip me over the edge.

We didn't really have a name for the phenomenon back then. Not one that you'd throw out during everyday conversation in a rural Kansas town. I wouldn't call it a crop circle, anyway. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, surrounded by swirling flecks of heat growing more intense with my emo… emotions, I made a crop  _square_. Corn was designed to stand tall and tough, but it still bent near the base when it got warm.

I charged back through the field, arms out to catch me should I stumble. Brown stalks bowed behind me like a crowd. Sure, it did start to wear off as I raced along, pell-mell. The heat faded, and the field stopped bending to my whims. But for just that brief moment - and I would never forget it -  _I_  felt like the most powerful pixie in the universe.

It was, and remains, the most insolent thing I ever did in my life. But no amount of magic could remove the mention of it from my permanent records. It's written there in bright blue ink even now, scrawled across the first paper to follow a little red tab sticking out near the front of the drawer, in a manila folder labeled "Current Status":  _Pixie 002; addressed as and hereafter referred to as "Sanderson"; Overseer of Complaints; Room 2A in Headquarters; personal quarters located in Tower Room 2. Does not appear fit to be successor. Capriciousness most likely stems from lack of environmental stability (Cross with Maslow's hierarchy of needs) during the critical period of development due to constantly-fluctuating circumstances surrounding unexpected birth (Cross with_ _Origin of the Pixies_ _, Chapter Eight: "The Nymph In the Sand"). For comparison on environmental stability, also see files on "Palomar" (pixie 016) and "Kaufman" (pixie 018) and cross with Chapter Twenty-Three of the aforementioned text, "The Makings of Greatness". High susceptibility to biological swarm trigger, general pleasant disposition, and apparent craving for affirmation makes him fair choice for companionship beyond Pixie World, yet simultaneously renders him too unpredictable for permanent leadership. Demonstrates high loyalty, though devotion unfortunately appears to result from familiar ties rather than respect for his superiors' positions. Loyalty under another figurehead aside from the Head Pixie [the First; his sire] is a subject which remains mostly unexplored; rivalries with several fellows within a four-thousand-year age range suggest high probability of loyalty collapsing after the rise of an eventual second Head Pixie. What such disloyalty may lead to is unknown, though one attempt at usurpation has been made in the past (May be worth comparing with_ _Origin of the Pixies_ _Chapter Sixteen: "Crossing Thresholds", Twenty-One, "How to Yoo-Doo", and Fifty-Two, "The Rise of Anti-Sanderson", as well as another file in this drawer, "Anti-Sanderson"). For every switching of leadership, it's advised not to trust him with important duties until his full loyalty is affirmed. Officially relocated from sixth in line of succession to nineteenth on Oct. 2, 1965 A.D, Year of the Splattered Snowfall (Cross with Subsection 2 of the file "History" within the drawer "Flappy Bob"); highly unlikely to significantly progress beyond this point. -F.S. Whimsifinado, MA/6/YoSS9._

I was still in my… state when I ran across the dark human. He didn't stop me, only stared, and I rushed past without bothering him either. Shouting, probably, nimrod that I was, and maybe about my concerns over what Longwood had planned for me if he rose into full power. The first thing to go, I assumed, would be my personal three-ring hole puncher. And that, I wouldn't stand for.

There's no telling how long I searched the surrounding corn. It could have been five minutes, or thirty. But I found it. Abandoned, in the dirt. Maybe stepped on. Ground beneath an uncaring heel. Regardless, it was  _it_.

My beating wings remained useless for flight, but they stirred up an anxious cloud of dust. It was difficult to even hear my own voice over the buzzing.  _Were_  those my wings, or all the scattered thoughts ricocheting through my brain? I made the mistake of wiping the back of my sore head, and my fingers came away sticky with green; the magic in my blood had fully made the change from its typical purple with the shifting of my mental state. That should have been my signal to step away from the situation- to imagine myself standing in a square of security and push all the negative emotions out of it, the way H.P. had taught me since before I could use a stapler. But, like a nymph, I ignored it.

Near-hovering, gulping up bites of air I didn't need, I finally swept up the abandoned gray hat and yanked it over my ears. It was too floppy, too big. If my fingers hadn't kept it pressed in place, it would have slipped over my eyes.

"U-uncap your pens or ready your typewriters. File this in triplicate. Mister Sanderson died here on September 16th, 1965. Until further notice, you - all of you - can refer to me as the Head Pixie!"

Something smacked me above my fiery bullet scrape, knocking the cap back to the ground. I made a dive for the soiled cloth, only to be tripped up by a quick swing at my legs.

"Put. My hat. Down, Sanderson. You know perfectly well that I loathe it when you do that."

I whipped around as soon as I heard my name, still twisted in my own arms and legs. Then I was on my feet, rapid wings straining to lift myself even a handful of inches off the ground.

There he was. A bit battered around the edges, smelling of crushed grain and maybe manure, but undeniably my boss. He held Flappy under one arm, gurgling. His other hand he'd set on his hip. Knuckles curled. Tight. At a loss for anything else to do, I plucked his hat from the dirt, tried to smooth out the creases, and handed it to him.

"Your magic lines are flickering, Sanderson. Keep them stable and connected to the energy field before you asphyxiate. You're bordering on tingle-fritzy."

I had one finger lengthwise between my teeth. No words came to my tongue, or my head. I just…  _panted_. Which still tasted weird, to feel all that empty air swirling through my nose. Even stranger to feel the prickling behind my eyes. My throat felt like it was being smothered by the rest of my neck. It was really not my day if I were coming down with something now. I hoped I wasn't contagious.

"I thought…"

His hand went up, palm turned towards me. "No, no need to explain. I believe I know exactly what you thought. You're growing restless with your rank in the company."

"No! No, sir- never!"

"Despite your knowing that Longwood is next in line of succession, both by the position I have given him and the legal conditions surrounding his birth, you are still convinced in your soul that you as firstborn have the right to take my place, and you pounced upon the opportunity without a second thought."

Every word came slamming down. I shook my head hard enough to rattle one side of my shades from my ear. H.P. hovered there, glowering in the darkness with the baby clown curled up in his right arm. Flappy's gurgling had become a low whimper, and he didn't even understand. My toes shrank away in my shoes, but neither they nor my shoulders had anywhere to hide.

"Sanderson, recognize that I trust you a great deal."

"Yes, sir- Of course, sir!"

"If you should ever give me any reason to suspect you are a threat to me or the interests of this company, I will not hesitate to replace you. Realize that I have no end of assistants to choose from. I don't reveal everything I've learned to the rest of you, even in  _Origin of the Pixies_ , and I have more power than you could ever plan to match until it's too late."

Shaking my head again, I wiped my sleeve several times down my tie and straightened up. "I understand that perfectly, sir. But, H.P., I ask that you, too, um… that you remember how everything I am is… of you. I share every last one of your genes. You know I would never betray you, nor the Pixies. I crave success, but- but I embody loyalty even more than that. I know my place the way you once knew yours, sir. I will always stand by your side. So long as you should have me. You know that. Sir."

"Hm. See that you do. I request such impudence never happens again. Don't ever, ever assume I am dead. I don't care if my hat" - he flapped said hat at me - "is spattered with blood turned red alongside pink scraps of flesh. I am  _immortal_ , and I will always be here. A thousand millennia may pass away, but to the best of my knowledge, I won't be leaving anywhere fast. You sealed your fate long ago. You will never wear this cap, Sanderson. You will  _never_  be Head Pixie. Not unless myself and all those who come before you on the list of succession should choose to retire, which I and presumably they never plan to, or I contract rabies, after which I don't doubt that I'll be coming for you first."

He waited for me to say "Yes, sir" again. I didn't. I wasn't lying when I'd told him I was as loyal a subordinate as he could wish for. But was it wrong if I didn't like the sound of 'never'? Not being worthy even of consideration… He truly wasn't proud of me. Not at all.

"Come on." The hat went back on his head. "I discovered a safe place beneath the tractor, just this way. We can wait there a moment before making a move for the barn."

"Erm, sir, if I might ask…"

"I was grazed by the bullet, is all, but it's no matter."

I wondered where he was bleeding. It wasn't clear in the dark, but from the way he angled the right side of his head away from me, I had an idea. I knew the flow hadn't stopped. I could taste the scent of it on my tongue. My wings folded and unfolded themselves as I trailed after him, on foot. Somehow, I couldn't bring myself off the ground.

"H.P., I- I'm not sure I understand. Why did you leave your hat there on the ground… if you clearly didn't travel far from it? You could have tak-"

He turned on me, bright heat glinting behind his glasses. "Because, simply put, I'm not nearly as sentimental as I know you are, Sanderson. I was content to leave the thing behind and not double back if it meant I lived, particularly when I suspected you might make an attempt to retrieve it for me. Risking my own wings is out of the question- the Pixie race itself must survive before any individual, and all of you are directionless without me as your head. You in particular. If I have to abandon that which I came here with to preserve myself, then so be it. I know what's worth risking for that simple cap, and life isn't on that list. Those bullets were never touched with magic.  _You could have been killed_ , and I would have been right over here to watch… you…"

I squirmed my shoulders. Silence, broken by one of Flappy's whimpers.

"He got your wing." H.P. realized then. His own drooped after a simple flap. After he adjusted his hat, he took my hand and guided it around to the tear. It was round, about the size of a half dollar. I folded the apex of my right wing back and forth between my fingers.

"I'm impressed," I said. "This is a small target."

"Here. Here, take off your suit coat and fold it over that rip to keep the dirt away.  _Not_  inside out, of course-"

"Obviously."

"-but we can't have that getting infected. Especially when we have no way to channel magic."

I did as he instructed, taking care to keep the jacket folded right side out. You could spread around that our kind were ridiculously picky about the way we and those around us wore their clothes, but then, humans didn't much like having sea urchin spines wedged three inches deep in their hands, and you didn't see me using that tidbit of information against them. At least, not unless I was provoked. That would be rude.

"Do you know how far we are from the Bridge, sir?" I asked, placing one hand on the green metal of the tractor. Its rear wheels stretched high, high above my head.

"Not precisely. I have a general idea, but it has been a few decades since I last inspected this portion of Kansas in any great detail." A crease appeared near the top of his nose. He pricked up his ears. "Our voices- Well, nothing to be done about that. They're coming back. Up in the air, Sanderson. We can avoid them entirely if we cut around the barn and then over the field far behind them."

"I… I can't fly with my wing like this, sir."

H.P. shifted his eyes from me to the dusty red barn ahead, me, the barn, me, the baby, towards the road, to me, the barn, and me.

"Okay," he said, and mumbled it again once more. He lowered Flappy back into my arms. "You hold the clown. Give me the keys. I'll move fast and bring the truck around as close as I'm able to. Stick here, near the tractor. Quietly." Keys clinked. He zipped off.

Flappy had found a fold of his spotted blanket to chew on. But he looked up with a giggle as H.P. flew past his head. One fat finger rose into the air.

"Bugga?"

"No. We're pixies. See, I have wings too." Setting him down to lift up the edge of my jacket, I twisted slightly to show him said wings I had, and beat them a few times to brush air across his face. Flappy squeezed his eyes shut, beaming. He had his one tooth bared in a grin. Then he opened his eyes, and his smile slipped away. The finger shifted to me.

"Ah. Ah. Ow."

Even I could understand the connection he was making. I picked him up beneath the armpits. "The hole doesn't hurt, Flappy. Pixie wings lack the nerves for pain, and all of us magical creatures are quick healers. It will mend itself after a few nights of rest. Until then, it's only a little stiff."

Flappy, however, was not going to take that sitting down. He stuck his little foot in my gut and craned his neck past my shoulder, chubby hands grabbing for a hold on the costa.

"Okay- Now it- hurts. Ow- Don't wrench it forward, you little…"

"F-fly, fly!"

I pushed him into the dirt. "No. No flying now."

"Fly!"

"I can't right now. Do you know what 'can't' means? There's a hole right here. As far as I'm aware, magic can only take physics and enhance them as though it were leaping off a springboard- not outright defy them. There are limits and nuances to these things, see? But someday when it's healed, then I'll hover for you. That's a deal."

I flinched as another  _crack!_  rang through the air, followed by a light stream of smoke. But this time, I did not question H.P.'s ability to escape relatively unharmed. It was already beginning to sink in, what I had really done. I could see my arrogant action from H.P.'s perspective. Doubting him, betraying him, interfering with any plan he may have had… No, not this time. This time, I simply drew Flappy to my chest and huddled softly against the tractor, wishing I had something to drink. H.P. would come back in a few minutes. It was our deal.

Flappy laughed, actually, and clapped his hands. It was only then that I started to wonder if the shotgun sounded anything like a circus cannon. He'd lost his red rubber nose among the corn.

By the time my blood calmed back to violet, the infamous Papa had come out to drag his nymph inside. The other human from the field went with them, polite conversation was exchanged on the porch… Yadda, yadda, yadda. H.P. rolled the truck around to the rocky path that led straight into the barn as soon as the humans returned to the farmhouse, so he must have been waiting for them to go. I pushed myself up with one hand, although I probably could have afforded to use both. Flappy clung to my neck,  _gaa_ ing and cooing and chewing on my lapel.

"Is it true that babies see upside-down for the first few months of their life?" I asked H.P. as I walked over.

"If you're any indication, it may be the first two hundred and fifty thousand years." He slid out of the car to take Flappy away, then returned to his preferred spot on the passenger side. I understood. The road may have looked empty, but it  _was_  dark out and we had a long way yet to go. His eyesight wasn't what it used to be.

I climbed in behind the wheel and, with some effort, heaved the door shut. "How old do you think he is, H.P.?"

"My understanding of human aging is limited. He doesn't have magic lines to count."

"How old might you guess?"

He shot me a sideways glance, dull-eyed. "Does it matter?"

I tightened my chapped lips. H.P. watched this for a moment before raising one white brow.

"For all I know, he just split from the amniotic sac and today is his birthday. Now, Sanderson, please set the brick into place on the gas pedal, and start the car."

Rubbing my eyes with my wrist while the crook of my elbow covered my yawn, I did as he requested.


	2. Whimsifinado v. Caudwell

_**Whimsifinado v. Caudwell:** Until they reach the age of majority at two hundred and fifty thousand, the Head Pixie holds legal rights to all pixies on the grounds that they are his offspring. Without his written consent, they may not enter into any legally-binding contracts, participate in the military, apply for outside work or schooling, seek medical care requiring surgeries, purchase processed sugar, and are to be fined and returned to Pixie World if caught wandering beyond its borders. Legal marriage to a non-Anti-Fairy or non-brownie alone after obtaining two hundred thousand years of age may emancipate them otherwise. Should the Head Pixie pass into dust, the Vice President takes on his role as Head and the same conditions shall be upheld with full legality, regardless of the lack of a biological founder/offspring bond._

* * *

With my wing out of commission, I had to stand to see above the steering wheel. The once-endless corn faded into browning cow pastures. Flappy Bob whined on and off until he stopped altogether, with his chubby thumb tucked behind his one front tooth. I hummed a few of my favorite Elvis songs for a time, but the tunes soon ran together with those I'd heard from my new-annual-project-who-would-hopefully-win-me-a-promotion Dolly Parton (She had a musical future ahead of her- I could sense it) and then became meaningless.

Stars twinkled above blue-tinted fields. Eventually the darkness forced my shades to return to their place on my collar. At some point my jacket slid off my injured wing. Seeing as there appeared little danger of dirt infecting the wound, I didn't bother fixing it.

I slid my hands from the rim of the steering wheel so they rested in the middle. My chin found that it fit snugly on the top. In the entire hour I drove, we passed maybe four other cars. They whizzed by our side, faster than Wilcox in his favorite rabbit form. Faster even than the fairies.

"Sanderson." H.P. slapped the back of my head. "You're drifting."

I pulled the truck back to the right side of the road, then massaged my eye sockets. "I'm really not sure if I can manage for much longer, sir."

Silence bathed the truck for an entire five minutes. The road was littered with stones and bumps. They jarred my chin, but I let it stay where I'd hooked it. Then, "I'll get the brick from the gas pedal. Go ahead and slow over on the side."

I was only too glad to accommodate, but my relief ebbed into concern when, after I had stopped, H.P. set the sleeping Flappy on the seat and started to climb through the truck's passenger window. "Sir?"

"This area rings familiar. Wait here while I check to see if my suspicions are true."

"Sir, we're coming onto will o' the wisp country. You shouldn't go out there alone- not without your starpiece. What if one of the damsels…"

"Then I'll invoke Kalysta's name and send them scattering. They still remember how we treated them during the Great Flood, I'm sure. In any case, we're too far southwest to have entered their territory, and I won't be gone long. I'm certain that we're almost there."

I licked some of the dryness from my lips, although having no saliva in my mouth meant that it didn't have much of an effect. "Almost where, sir?" I'd taken the long slide down the Bit Bridge maybe half a dozen times in my life, and I remembered it touching down beside our little Mushroom Rock, smack in the middle of the state in the middle of the country in the middle of North America. Unfortunately, the humans had been buzzing around the place as of late (Something about wanting to turn it into a state park?) and it had been some time since I'd had my knowledge of the area refreshed.

"We're almost to the African Safari."

This… this was Kansas. But I knew better than to argue. Besides, H.P. whirred away before I would have had much of a chance.

I left the headlamps on so he could find us again without too much trouble, then crawled across the seat and lay my head near Flappy Bob's. It looked as though it had been a long day for both of us. His white face was smudged with grime. In the dark, I couldn't tell if the red across his chin was clowny make-up, or human blood.

"What happened to your parents?" I murmured, shutting my eyes. "If you came from the circus train, how did you end up in the rocket capsule? Was it your bed? Did you fall, somehow?"

Imps or crickets chirped outside the window. I must have dozed off, because a moment later H.P. was shaking me by the shoulder.

"Hn? Tooth Fairy? Quarters? Where?"

"I wasn't mistaken, Sanderson. The African Safari is hardly three miles further. Come, we'll want to stop there. I promise that you'll find it a more welcome place to spend the night."

It's difficult to argue with a promise.

As soon as I shifted position, Flappy awoke and began to cry. I put my hand on one of his. "Sir-"

"I promise." H.P. took me by the crook of my arm and helped me further from the steering wheel. Still groggy, I held Flappy in my lap as the engine started up again. I leaned my head against the passenger door, watching the headlights sweep across open hills and dry turns of road… On, on, on…

"Here we are," and we stopped again, our front bumper barely a wing's breadth from a bruise-colored dumpster. It was full, and three more garbage bags stood like sentries at its side. Perhaps a raccoon had gotten into one of them and run off at our approach, because the slick plastic had been torn open and a few pieces of moldy bread had spilled into the parking lot, along with several broken corn chips. I found myself wondering if those would pierce through tires.

Then the headlights flicked off. That didn't help me identify our location any better. I squinted, craning my neck. Across the chain-link fence ahead of us were the words  _African Safari Mini Golf_  written on a cheerful red and white sign.

"Oh. The miniature golf course. Is this the one that you built, H.P.?"

"A replica. I  _did_  dismantle the original when the humans were first settling in the area long ago. But, yes, when the time seemed reasonable to reconstruct it, I set it up again to bring in human revenue. There's a former fairy godkid who runs the place now, if I am not mistaken." H.P. slid his eyes to my face and gave me that satisfied, half-lidded smile of his. Without another word, he slid from the truck. I stuffed the keys in my pocket, rolled the truck windows up, climbed down to the road, climbed back up to lock the doors, and followed on foot with the unhappy clown.

"It'll be much more enjoyable to pass the night in here than in the stuffy truck," he told me, floating above the entrance gate. I was forced to stop and press my nose through one of the gaps in the chains.

"Will it be?"

"Of course. It's  _golf_. And it's closed down for the night, which guarantees us protection from humans until the place opens tomorrow at nine." H.P. realized my predicament about then. He hesitated for a moment, then swept down and pried the crying Flappy from my arms. It irritated me that his wailing grew softer when it was H.P.'s face he was looking at. But, then, there were reasons why he was the superior. I watched with vague uncertainty as they touched down on the opposite side of the gate. H.P. didn't so much as give the baby a second glance before he came back for me.

"H.P., I think the truck would be…"

"Nonsense, Sanderson. Come on. Up, up, as high on the gate as you can manage. I'll boost you the rest of the way."

I clunked my forehead against the metal. I was so  _drained_. But H.P. was brimming with insistence, and he was the boss. He knew what he was doing. I wrapped my fingers through the links and began to hoist myself up. It wasn't quick going. More than once, my exhaustion and general lack of strength resulted in me losing my grip and tumbling back down. Flappy continued to wail. I was close to releasing the gate and calling it quits when H.P. took hold of my shoulders and flew me up to the top. I balanced there among the points, blinking unsteadily. Though I clung to the solid bar beneath me with all the strength I could manage, I almost toppled over.

"Oh, that certainly wasn't good for my back," he muttered, settling himself on my left. He straightened his tie. "You aren't nearly as small as you were two hundred fifty thousand years ago."

I stared across the golf course, with its tall black shapes rising up against a sea even blacker. "Was I much the same as I am now when I was that little, H.P.?"

"Flappy Bob needs attention," he observed. "Come on. Time we went down."

He didn't offer me any help as I started down, only to find that my sore fingers wouldn't hold me up. I hit solidly, staggered, and fell so far back that I crushed my wings. When my eyes rolled into focus, I found myself lying beside a gap torn through the bottom of the chain-links, a little larger than Flappy. That figured. If I'd been paying more attention earlier (and if I'd been willing to struggle in the mud to squeeze through a hole I might actually be too big for), then I may have saved myself a great deal of soreness. I considered shoving one of the nearby rocks in front of it, just to show the gap that I was annoyed by its arrogant existence, but then I didn't. Instead, I settled for flaring my nostrils out at it in a  _Just try to get back at me for this_  way and flopped to my stomach as H.P. fluttered down from the fence. He offered me his hand.

"On your feet again, Sanderson. No employee of mine will be caught sprawled in the dirt."

I took it. "I don't suppose you keep a backup starpiece stashed away in here, sir?"

"I did, once. But that was a few decades ago, and the place was slightly different then." He glanced around in distaste. "The humans are always trying to make 'improvements' to it. For sentimental reasons, I rarely allow that. Although some of the animals and landmarks have been improved. The Egyptian pyramids I particularly like. And, I do know where we may find a couple of clubs." With that, he flew off to investigate a nearby rosebush.

Before I joined him, I picked up Flappy and bounced him gently. It didn't stop his sobbing entirely, but it did seem to soothe him. I made shushing noises as we started along the concrete path towards a long shack (For renting out the balls and things, perhaps?) "Sir, I'm not sure if miniature golf courses necessarily satisfy the emotional needs of babies."

H.P., a rusty putter now at his side, turned me around by my chin, then placed a hand between my wings and steered me towards the first hole on the shack's left. "Certainly they do. Which one of us has fathered nymphs before?"

I covered Flappy's mouth with my palm. He bit, like a true pixie would. I pretended not to notice. "He's still crying, H.P."

"That means he's excited to be here," he insisted, lighting himself on the back of an iron rhinoceros. He spun his club once through his fingers. Then he nodded. "If you remember, this is the same miniature golf course where you were born. Right over there at the edge of the sand trap, about where the larger of those two decorative hippos lays on Hole 10. That's why I named you 'Sandy'. It's not nearly as, well,  _magical_  here as that little place I know up in Oregon, but it has its secrets and it serves its purpose."

I'd been to the course once before. Perhaps three or four times. I could remember picking my red ball up by hand and sticking it through a tube in the hill, back when Hawkins and Wilcox and Longwood and I were the only other pixies there were in the universe, and we lived with China. H.P. had snapped at me for that, if I recalled correctly- the cheating. He'd spent a lot of that day zipping about us, shoving clubs into our tiny hands, yanking us out of ponds, and grabbing the napes of our necks when we went for a second or third putt in a row. In the end, I think, he'd given up and let us press colorful balls into his eye sockets and the pockets of his suit. I cleared my throat.

"Do you…?"

My voice came out as a harsh rasp. I patted my dry tongue against my lips, then tried again. "Do you remember many stories about when I was as young as Flappy, boss?"

H.P. made the mistake of glancing my way before he pretended not to hear my question. Flapping his wings again, he went off to find a stray golf ball. That didn't surprise me. He much preferred to view us as his employees rather than children who all shared his identical genetic code. If he could choose, he likely would have stopped the asexual reproduction long ago. The last pixie born had been Verona, already past his four hundred and fortieth birthday and showing up a half dozen of his coworkers at the typewriter. But, H.P. had accepted his fate, and he'd already begun making arrangements for the next one of us; everyone had heard him testing the name "Finley" for decades…

Whimpering, Flappy poked his finger beneath my shades. I pushed his hand down. "No," I scolded, "we don't jab. And, you're a regular mess. Let's clean you up. I think the moonlight is reflecting off a water trap over there."

Water. Water. Water! I hadn't wanted to get my hopes up just in case I was wrong, but as I approached the small army of metal animals encircling the watering hole on Hole 8, I felt hope swell within me. I knelt between a hulking elephant and a slender zebra near the little wooden bridge. Hugging Flappy to me with one arm, bracing myself with the other, I drank until all the dirt and corn dust had washed from my mouth. It tasted like whipped cream. When I next licked my lips, actual wetness spread itself over the cracks. Then, dampening the end of my sleeve, I rinsed Flappy's face and arms until all the colors of his clown make-up swirled away into the pool.

"Would you look at that, Flappy." I turned him around and pointed to his reflection. "You have black hair just like I do. You're like a miniature Sanderson. This is a much better fit for you than that ginger spray in your puff, don't you think so?"

He broke into hot tears once more. I pulled him back from the water, shushing him with my palm across his mouth again. We listened for any sound of approaching human feet. No- just the metallic swat of H.P. swinging his club, and the  _truff, truff, truff,_  as his ball hit the grass and rolled over by the first hole.

Flappy sucked at his thumb with a sound like  _nuk nuk nuk nuk nuk nuk_. My stomach clenched. I hadn't thought about it between fleeing from the humans and how parched my throat had been, but I hadn't eaten since H.P. and I had stopped at a diner somewhere in Colorado. Like an idiot, I'd turned up my nose to anything but my water and unsalted fries. Now I found myself wishing I'd grabbed a few ears of corn from Flappy's field.

Out of habit, I tried to flap my way over to H.P., but the tear in my wing wouldn't allow that and I overbalanced. I caught myself with one elbow the instant before Flappy's skull could slam into the dirt. His thumb popped from his mouth. Crying, again. I tightened my lips. That certainly was a trick human infants were fond of pulling for attention.

Take two. Clutching the baby, I approached H.P. on foot where he hovered at the bottom of a slope. His ball, soiled with grass-stains and mud, had wedged itself into a slight divot in the artificial turf four inches from the hole. H.P. stared at it with a face that radiated unadulterated disappointment. One hand was turned upwards, like  _How dare you?_

"Where would you prefer we sleep, sir?"

He looked away from the offending ball. "Beg pardon?"

"Do you have any particular preference on where we sleep tonight? It is, after all, your course."

"You want to sleep." H.P. pronounced it without any sort of upwards inflection at the end, even though he had touched the left side of his glasses- that way he did on rare occasions when he ran up against something that puzzled him. "You realize, I hope, that there is golf here." Then he seemed to take in Flappy for the first time in a few minutes, up and down. "Won't he stop crying?"

I smothered Flappy's mouth in my shirt, which didn't have as much effect as I'd hoped it might. "I don't know what's agitating or has agitated him, sir. He's too young for real communication. I think he's still in pooferty."

"Typical. Well. See what you can do about him. It's about time you learned firsthand what I went through with you." There was a mumble at the end containing words I didn't quite catch.

"And…" Regretting the attempt instantly, I bit down on my bottom lip. H.P., readying his next swing, somehow found the time to shoot me a drawn-together glance.

"I don't much like fragmented sentences, Sanderson."

"I'm hungry, sir."

H.P. probably didn't hear me. Almost certainly, he didn't hear me. But that didn't change the fact that he knew, that he understood- that he actually reacted to my words. The Head Pixie was simply not the type of being one should or could keep secrets from. He stared at me like  _I_  had become the ball in the grass. "There is very little I can do about that at the moment."

I scuffed the toe of my shoe across the cement walkway. "I only bring it up, H.P., because, well, you  _are_  the boss…"

"Sanderson." A note of warning crept into his tone. "I won't have  _two_  traveling companions dissolve into an array of messy emotions. The clown I excuse on the grounds that he is an infant. You, however, know better than to pout."

Even as Flappy pulled at my cheeks, I tried very hard not to blink. It did no good. H.P. always knew when I blinked, and no pair of shiny shades would ever change that. As soon as I had, he removed his glasses and polished the lenses on the hem of his suit. My wings twitched. He didn't raise his eyes.

"You know, Sanderson, there was once a time when I was two fifty-three thousand, too."

Translation: In admitting my weakness, in failing to stand stalwart, I had crossed the unmentionable line, and I was to be punished. Dragons were natural storytellers, and I'd never met a one who would consider eating anybody who'd just offered to hear out a tale or three (H.P. said that's how he'd wriggled out of one's claws after this anti-cherub had lured him into a trap before I was born). Pixies were not the same. Oh pixies, raised upon the written word, were  _not_. I craved relevance. Usefulness. H.P. had a lot of past, and I wasn't present in most of it. Stories that did not contain any mention of Sanderson simply bored me. And when you're capable of boring a pixie, well, it's obvious that you're overdue for a reevaluation of your life, isn't it?

"You know well that I spent the first few years of my life in Fairy World, in Ambrosine's company. You remember Ambrosine. I was treated as a fairy child, sent away to school, and bestowed with a starpiece - a little black and gold wand, insignificant and just like the others - of my own. Then, when I was something like four hundred and eighty-five thousand, at last independent and with my own godchild (Humans were greatly different back then from what they are now, actually, and we didn't grant their wishes so much as affectionately follow them about and keep them out of trouble) then, I somehow misplaced it. My starpiece, I mean. Lost it somewhere between La Brea and what are now the Rocky Mountains, I think; it may be there even now, miles below the soil. And thus began the next period of my life where I was magicless, and broke. Though it was shortly before you were born, I still considered myself to be young and arrogant. In no way, of course, would I return wriggling on my stomach to my father to plead for a free replacement, so I made my way eastward…"

I was beginning to understand why Flappy saw the need to cry. I'm not sure at which part I officially zoned out, but I think it was when the Anti-Fairies enacted one of their more famous raids on a huge will o' the wisp burrow system in present-day Tennessee. Nice people, will o' the wisps, aside from the paralyze-your-limbs-or-even-kill-you-if-you're-not-in-heat thing. I met a few particularly kind ones during my sabbatical as I was coming into my Elvis Presley phase. Elvis is neat. He'd make a better employee for Santa Claus than a few spritely sparklebottoms I could mention. And, Elvis wouldn't turn into a raging psycho around a unicorn. He might even like unicorns. Maybe someone should bring him a unicorn. Could we fit one of those into next quarter's budget?

"… a mere day here in Kansas, not half so far as Maine or California, and manage to make do without. These are the facts of life, and particularly among pixies, for such is the lot we were drawn. I presume you realize why I hold little, if any, sympathy."

Smoof; I hadn't been following. Shouldn't have gotten distracted with the saddle color of the unicorn. Then again, even when I did follow perfectly, I never understood a lot of H.P.'s decisions anyway. That was why he made such a great boss. Nonetheless, I  _had_  grasped the part that involved me not receiving food. I nodded.

"Good man. Off with you now."

I wandered away from the grass and towards the long shack that guarded the entire course from the center like a fat castle keep. It even had limp pennants along its roof. "Would you listen to him, Flappy? The boss doesn't much like discussing his own past, but he'll do it a thousand, or even two thousand times more than talk about mine. A century, Flappy! There are about a hundred years that I don't even remember! You could almost fit three thirty-seven-year plans into that amount of time and… Hello. What's… this?"

The sign on the side of the shack started glowing. In actuality, it had probably been glowing the entire time we'd been here, and I simply hadn't noticed it between H.P. picking me up and carrying me above the fence. After I removed my shades, I read aloud the pink neon words, "Snack Shack".

As I stood gaping, I had two thoughts at the same time. The first was a question of why the neon was lit if the golf course had been shut down for the night, because that didn't seem to be particularly cost-effective. The second: Food!

I was small. Choosing to ignore this fact, I fluttered my wings enough to rise about two millimeters off the ground. I held the clown above my head- my arms could stretch pretty far when I wanted them to.

"All right, Flappy. I need you to grasp the counter for me. Okay? Grasp. Counter."

A moment ago, his wailing had trickled into drool. He batted his hands around. "Come on, Flappy Bob," I murmured again, "Throw me a bone here. Or at least a nacho." With a furious collection of wingbeats and a tremendous shove, I lifted the baby above the countertop. His skin squeaked as it slid across polished granite.

"Perfect. Now, pull me up."

I could hear him making noises, but he didn't respond. Frowning just a tiny smidge, I moved a few paces back so I could get a better look at him. He just… he just sort of lay there on his side, grunting some and croaking out choppy little whines.

"Flappy." Again, I reached up my hands. "I can't hover, so you'll have to pull me up. Come on. I may be quite a bit taller than you, but I'm at least three pounds lighter. If a pixie just a few days out of the sac can follow basic instructions like this, I'm sure you can as well."

Flappy wouldn't do it. He wouldn't even try. Surrendering, I tried to grab the end of his blanket and drag him back into my arms. I couldn't reach. Even when I jumped.

Erm…

H.P. had slaughtered Holes 9, 10, and 11 and was studying the setup of the twelfth. "Michaels and Hirschi were both born under the elephant statue," he mused as I came up behind him.

I pointed back the way I had come. "H.P., I'm having some trouble getting Flappy off the counter of the snack bar."

He leaned down on one knee, peering into a white tube that cut a tunnel through a low rise. "Oh, are you now? How did he get up there?"

"I set him there. But now he won't come down."

"All right. Allow me just another hole - perhaps two - and I'll come take a look." Pushing himself back into the air, H.P. whipped his club.  _Crack_! The ball bounced off the head of a decorative honey badger, skimmed down the neck of the taller giraffe, and rolled past the lioness and into the tunnel. He raced it down to the lower curl of turf by the acacias. I clapped a few times. It was one of his better holes-in-one.

Rubbing my wings so they began to chirp faintly like an imp's, I returned to the long shack. Flappy was sobbing again. His cries rang out jaggedly, like his mouth could only handle letting out so much noise at a time. That settled the question of the course being abandoned, then. Somehow he'd kicked his yellow and red blanket to the grass.

"Your feet are tiny," I observed as I scooped it up. "Also, I'm thinking that we really ought to find you a blanket that doesn't make you look half the fashion disaster of an anti-pixie. Not my most favorite people, them." Anti-Sanderson in particular rang to me as a nutcase… He'd overthrown the Head Anti-Pixie almost eighty thousand years ago and never once shown a sign of regret, even in his drunk and scribbled letters. I needed a new pen pal. Still, we'd had our month of enjoyable dancing and eating corn chips, before H.P. had banned me from all their raves…

The baby's words were indistinct - he was gargling, mostly - but I did catch the word 'corn' in there.

"That's right, Flappy. We did find you in a cornfield. Hmm… There has to be something around here I could climb on. I just need to look around." I looked around. No ladders stood in the open and at average pixie height, but there was a bronze-colored hyena on Hole 11, so maybe…

After I'd tied Flappy's blanket around my waist, I pushed the hyena closer to the counter. It was heavier than I'd hoped and didn't move easily. At the edge of the course, it clunked against the little rocks that fenced it in. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if it was worth dragging it up and over. I almost didn't manage to push it upright. The shack was a good six or so feet from where I stood at the edge of Hole 11, and when I climbed onto the hyena's back it didn't give me a large boost. But it might be, I thought, just enough for a creature who could fly. It was worth my time to try. The hyena wobbled beneath my feet. Flaring my wings, I sprang.

My forehead crashed into the edge of the counter. I thumped into the concrete and tumbled all the way over to a strip of actual grass before I stopped beneath a small tree; judging from all the tiny red and brown leaves I rolled through I thought it might have been a maple -  _the_  maple - with spidery branches that rested against the roof. My wrist stung from having twisted. No bother- all its pain would vanish in an hour or so. A little sooner if I had magic at my disposal, but, well.

I curled on my side and lay there a moment, listening to Flappy wail. His voice rose and fell like waves in a storm. It was almost pleasant to listen to for a few seconds, just because it was interesting. Pixie whimpers were lower pitched, and didn't have that stagger to them.

But finally I collected my shades, picked myself up, and turned around. Jumping from the hyena again was out of the question. I needed some other way to land on the counter. A step-stool would be ideal, but a crate would work, or maybe a lighter animal. Thinking I might give one of the thin gazelles a try, I clapped my hands once and started for Hole 15. Apart from the distant, constant whistle of H.P.'s wings, the entire place fell silent as soon as I stopped marching on the fallen maple leaves.

… Wait a minute.

I didn't stop walking or even slow down. The instant the thought clicked in my head, I turned on my toes and beelined back to the Snack Shack.

The maple tree stood precisely where I had left it. I placed one hand on the trunk and gazed up among the branches. Evidently the tree wasn't the same tree that had stood here before I was born, but it  _was_  likely a descendant, and a recent one, relatively speaking. A few splinters of smooth bark peeled away as I tried to dig my fingers in. My first attempt at hoisting myself up found me back on the ground in a matter of wingbeats. Chilly air whipped around my ears.

Shutting my eyes, I pinched my nose and rubbed along the bridge. Nothing in me wanted to climb. I just wanted to shut down and dream of waking in some sugarcoated paradise, with a gift basket set out just for me. But as long as Flappy screamed, I predicted I wouldn't be falling asleep. And if I could get up there, I ought to be able to lift the sliding metal panel and reach some of the alleged snacks within.

So, yes. I climbed. To my own surprise, I found it easier than climbing the chain-link fence. My fingers fit well in gaps of the bark, and they didn't grow sore from having too much pressure focused on too small an area. Maybe it was the refreshing sip of water I'd taken. Maybe it was having the neon for light, or just the shorter distance. Maybe climbing wood was another of those pixie-wasp instincts (Wood is just paper in its early stages, isn't it? Let's go with that idea). Or maybe I was spurred upward by my need to hush Flappy's crying.

I think it was probably the refreshing sip of water.

Still keeping my movements slow, I straddled one of the thinner branches just above the Snack Shack roof. A fair portion of the park was visible from here, from our truck and the dumpsters in the parking lot behind me all the way over to H.P. readying himself for Hole 15. The roof lay just below my feet. I studied the metal, arrayed in slippery rows and speckled with rust. Dropping down on it looked like a convenient way to send me sliding directly off the edge to the concrete below.

I swung my left foot over the other side of the branch. With an attempted flap, I tried to settle myself on the tin. My feet were out from under me in an instant. Still, when I sprawled my limbs between the ridges, I managed to halt my descent (or slow it, at any rate). My shirt untucked itself from my slacks, and my belly scraped along cold metal. Two flaps of serrated tin pinched my fingers. Beating my wings lifted my confidence (even if it was a useless gesture) quicker and quicker as I neared the lip of the roof. As predicted, when I reached the end I started to tip over, but my hands caught a grip on a white gutter that ran around the edge. Some of the brittle helicopter seeds had gathered inside it, and as I reached out for a better hold, a spotted green lizard ran straight past my probing hand. I pulled back, then smacked my own cheek and tried again.

Clinging to the gutter's rim, I lowered myself as far down as my arms would allow me to go. Flappy's crying jolted, like I'd caught his attention, but then he fell back into it. One of my knees smacked what I think was the neon letter H, and the toe of the other foot hit the metal divider with a resounding clang.

"Hang on, Flappy."

I looked up at the sky. The moon was waxing, and clouds skittered across it like ants on a trail. Well. No point in waiting. Taking care that I wouldn't crush Flappy, I dropped.

I almost didn't stick the landing. As it was, only the rapid beating of my wings kept me from slipping backwards off the ledge. I sat down. Flappy crawled across the counter towards me, his cries ebbing off altogether. I patted his head, but made no attempt to pick him up. Each muscle in my limbs strained in two directions. Every time I blinked, I had to do it twice to ensure my lids wouldn't stay shut with sleep. I repositioned myself against the metal divider and allowed Flappy Bob to entertain himself with the buttons on my suit coat.

"I want… to die right now."

I didn't, but I didn't want to do… anything. I rubbed my hands up and down Flappy's shoulders, all spiked with goosebumps. It occurred to me that I still had his blanket knotted around my waist, and I wrapped him up in it. Then, deciding that my hunger outweighed my exhaustion by too large of a margin not to try, I lay him aside, took hold of the handle on the Snack Shack's metal divider, and heaved upward with every ounce of pixie might.

It didn't budge.

After all the-

 _It didn't budge_.

I tried to squirm my fingers beneath the lowest part, but the hatch  _didn't budge_. A muffled scream slipped past my lips. Repositioning myself nearer the middle, I gave it another go. I'd come too far for the world to simply be unfair.

This time, giving it all I had, I lost my grip and crashed on my face. Flappy chuckled as I drew myself together again. I gave him an unblinking stare over the rims of my shades until he went quiet. Without magic, I was simply too weak to lift the divider. If I was still bleeding anywhere, I'd be draining steadily too. I pulled off my tie, folded up my wings, and tugged off my suit coat and mud-spattered shirt, but after a quick once-over revealed nothing but bruises and scars, I shrugged and put them back on.

Sighing through my nose, I sat Flappy up and stretched my arms above my head. "I may not be getting anything to eat tonight, but let my file show that I gave it a fair effort."

The baby, overbalanced by the weight of his own upper body, toppled backwards off the counter. A lifetime of practice kept me from wincing at the smack of skin and bones across solid concrete. I crawled over to the edge and poked my head over the lip.

"Flappy?"

He lay on his back among the puffy folds of his blanket, face pinched with betrayal. His chest heaved like a bellows. His mouth opened, strangled and soundless.

I set my hands on either side of me, pushed off the counter, and dropped down beside him as the first of what I suspected to be a long round of screeches broke the night. Then I fumbled to scoop him into my arms. "Stop it, Flappy. Tears have never healed anyone before. Unless human tears are magical and we've never found out about it. Is that what you're doing? Does some instinct tell you to? Do you know something we don't?" I brushed my finger across one of his larger tears and moved it around to the back of his head. He grabbed my hand and we wrestled over it for a moment before he managed to stick my finger in his mouth and bite down hard.

It was impossible not to laugh just a little at that. "You're practically a pixie already. All you really need is a suit and a tie, a little cap for your head, and some wings to float with."

But my smile slowly faded as he continued crying around my finger. He stared at me, pinkish eyes bright and blinking.

"Play is play, Flappy, but that's enough."

He didn't think it was enough.

"I said, that's enough. Stop it. Just- just… Stop. H.P. will cut your paycheck. He'll demote you to Head Closet Cleaner. Your lunch break will last no longer than five minutes. He'll disable the automatic magic approval functions of your starpiece and then reject all your requests. He could fire you from Headquarters entirely, and you'd have to find a job down the street in laundry services or dishwashing or bricklaying or grocery-fetching. Stop it! Aren't you concerned he'll be disappointed in you? Don't you  _care_?"

Apparently, no. After replacing the baby on the ground, I kneeled over him. My wings folded against one another. Then they spread out again, folded, spread, and folded as I listened to him howl. I shoved my shades up my forehead so I could rub both palms around my brows.

"What do you  _want_  from me? Oh, go kiss a brownie."

His grasping fingers closed around my dangling tie. When he tugged, he almost yanked me into his face. Deciding that I could fight gravity best by picking him up once more, I did.

I was frustrated with myself just as much as the tiny baby. Finally I was old enough to be trusted holding a child in my arms completely unsupervised, and I could understand why H.P. didn't like them being around. They were needy when there was important business to be done. They made a bad situation worse. I couldn't imagine what we'd do to silence it if there were humans about like there had been back in the cornfield.

My shoulders twitched. I didn't like this anymore. I would never break down sobbing like Flappy, but I needed an outlet of my own regardless. I needed noise that fell into an orderly pattern. I needed a flowing melody.

Maybe…

H.P. had never sung me lullabies as a tiny nymph - not that I remembered - but I'd picked up the concept over the centuries. When I was having one of those craving periods where I needed to  _ping_  ideas into some random human's mind or risk inspiration backup, my instincts led me to stray near those who favored music. They, at least, appreciated my thought process. There had to be one… Somewhere… Something…

I pushed Flappy's head against my neck and traced one hand in circles over the place where his wings should have been. " _Sandman's comin', yes he's comin', to sprinkle you with sand. He'll say 'one, two, three' and you'll be in cotton candy land_."

He didn't stop crying, but he at least paused for a second to listen to me before he returned to it. I held him tighter, trying to make him  _feel_  the music vibrating from my throat, wracking my mind for another song.

" _I'lllll be as strong as a mountain, or weeaaak as a willow tree… Any way you want me, well, that's how I will be._  Shh… Shh… That's better. You're an Elvis fan too, aren't you? I knew you'd be. No- no, don't start this up again. Stop it, Flappy.  _I'lllll be as tame as a baby, or wild as the raging sea… Any way you want me, well, that's how I will be. In your hands, my heart is clay. To take and hold as you may. I'm what you make me; you've only to take me. And in your arms I will stay, hey, hey…_ "

I stopped myself before the final verse. Not because Flappy had fallen asleep against my chest. No, Flappy was still bucking and wailing like he expected to receive a bonus for a tantrum well done. I stopped because… Well, probably because…

… I didn't know why I'd stopped. So after hesitating for only a couple seconds more, I finished up the song. Flappy was no calmer by the time I was done, and I wasn't in the mood for holding the wriggling mass anymore. I returned him to the grass beside me and lay back, my fingers locked beneath my head.

"Stars are out," I said over the noise. "H.P. says only a few of them are real. All the rest are ancient Fairy warriors, over nine million years old. That's what he says. They're supposed to defend the galaxy from this great, mobile, endless sucking void called The Darkness. I don't really believe that. Pixies didn't exist back then. We have no witnesses, no records, no files, no primary sources at all. Even the ancient Fairy Council have all died off and were replaced with newly-elected officials time and time again. There remain no survivors."

Before the little clown had the chance to become one of the few mortals to learn the secrets of magical history, H.P. skimmed over to us, almost dropping his club as he stuffed the ball in his pocket. His expression tipped slightly into a frown when he saw Flappy was no longer on the counter of the snack bar. I pushed myself up to a sitting position.

"He won't stop crying, H.P."

H.P. handed me his golf club and took up the unhappy baby instead. "Is he trying to tell you he's hungry?"

Sure. I saw no reason to deny that. That was better than admitting I'd accidentally pushed him off the counter. Readjusting how my jacket hung over my injured wing, I said carefully, "What… what do babies eat?"

"Oh honestly, Sanderson. They'll try anything that fits in their mouth, really. What they  _need_  is milk."

"Like pixies," I hinted.

"Like pixies, like huldufólk, like fairies, like brownies, like humans, like every mammal in existence." He bounced Flappy in his arms and lay him sideways against his chest, nestled in the crook of his arm. The baby's weeping finally began to trickle down, even if it was only a little. He tugged on the lapel of H.P.'s suit. H.P. nodded. "We'll stop for milk and mushy food tomorrow when we're passing through Jetmore."

I rose to my feet. "Shouldn't…"

"Yes, Sanderson?"

"Er, should we consider going now? After all, he's upset. I've tried everything I could think of to soothe him, but nothing works."

H.P. shrugged. "There's no need to strain ourselves. He'll cry himself to sleep eventually, and we'll make sure he gets food when we stop for breakfast in the morning, and again for lunch if necessary. We'll make it home by evening, barring any unexpected misfortunes. It's one night. He'll live. I'm confident his parents keep him decently fed."

I studied the squirming clown, who for the moment seemed content to work at a mouthful of suit. "If you're sure, sir."

"I am. I do not think it would be worth our time and effort. However, if you find yourself so deeply concerned about his comfort, you have my permission to leave the golf course, take some of the money from the glovebox of the truck, and see what you can pull together for him. You might find a rest stop with a vending machine." Silence, and H.P. lifted an eyebrow. "You're hesitating."

Was I?

"Come with me, boss," I pleaded, cracking more and more as I went along. A tremble started in the base of my wings. "Flappy's hungry -  _I'm_  hungry - and I'm not very familiar with this area. We both know how difficult it is to purchase items from human stores when we're this small. We can find a heavy coat and make another pixie stack, with you on my head. And I don't… like being left alone. What if something comes up and I don't know what to do? What if a human shoots at me, or tries to catch me? Though I am exhausted, I can and will keep awake for food. I'll find some paper and fill out a schedule adjustment request- I've memorized both pages of the form, sir."

I received a curious look for my response. "Sanderson, you are over two hundred and fifty-three thousand years old. That's enough to both look after yourself and make your own decisions. I gave you permission. And I trust you."

The 't' word had entered the conversation. Phrased almost like a challenge. My eyes, which had darted to my twisting hands, shot back up to meet H.P.'s. It was an uncomfortable angle; I still wasn't used to being grounded.

 _Trust you_. His words stung my ears. Sharper and swifter than any smack ever had. My stomach coiled into a figure eight around my fagiggly gland. If I left the golf course, I'd be both displaying weakness in succumbing to my nature, and going against his confident instructions. And if I stayed, I'd have to resign myself to a hungry night, and now I'd also be turning my nose up at his trust.

H.P. hovered there with the four buttons of his suit at my eye level. He actually looked amused to see me squirming under his gaze. After over two hundred millennia, he was for the very first time setting his eldest offspring to the ultimate test. But would an expression of independence be interpreted as a sign of self-sufficiency, of capability? Or… impudence and insubordination? Had he raised me so one day the bird might leave the nest, or did he expect the ant to provide for the colony forever? It was a mind game with no way out.

"I… I…"

He had been the first pixie brought into existence, so far as we had ever known, and I the second. There was no one I might look to as an example. Were we, his offspring, intended to remain part of his hive our entire lives like worker bees, or leave to begin our own colonies like wasps when we came of age?

Did he know the answer? Should my decision here, this September night at an inconspicuous mini golf course that had existed and been hidden and remodeled ever since distant times, prove either the success or failure of what had become his lifelong work? Would he record this moment in time as the ultimate betrayal, or the day I finally came of age? If I only knew  _what he expected_ , then I could meet him there.

My wings began to shuffle themselves. My toes twitched inside my scuffed black shoes.

_I will not hesitate to replace you._

Flappy whimpered, loosened his gums from H.P.'s suit, and began to wail again for food and care. A tiny smile had appeared on my boss's lips as he gazed on me. He was a sadist; I carried the gene myself, but I so rarely became his plaything…

As I chewed on my upper lip, I remembered the diner so long ago in Colorado. I remembered how H.P. had rejected all my snack suggestions just before he'd wished we would run across a baby. I remembered the way I'd regretted not snatching something from Flappy's cornfield. I remembered the barricaded Snack Shack.

I remembered the furious way H.P. had looked at me when I'd stupidly charged back into danger in search of his hat. I remembered my small blue office, with its comforting four corners, floating desk, and my nameplate on the door. I remembered all the smug tells shooting out from Longwood's body the day he was named company vice president, even though he kept his face emotionless and made them applaud for me, and the humiliation that had slammed down like chain mail on my shoulders as I left that ceremony, once so foolishly sure that the position would be mine, just because H.P. had once told me at age 1,552 that I was to be his heir.

"Sanderson," H.P. said, "what do  _you_  think?"

I watched Flappy's legs kick against my boss's chest. He screeched, clawing for milk that H.P. could not provide. He wasn't the first, nor to be the last. Once upon a time, it had been me begging there. Before Pixies Incorporated - before Pixie  _World_ , in fact - and before H.P. had even gotten tangled up with Kalysta Ivorie and the other will o' the wisps, like Idona. Yes. Once upon a time, I had been starving and crying in H.P.'s arms too.

That was when I knew, with no regrets, what I ought to do. Straightening my shoulders, I adjusted my tie with one fist. Then, working slowly, I removed my coat from my wing again, reached into the inside pocket on the left where I normally would keep my starpiece, and drew out the keys to the truck.

Let my decision stand as a precedent for all pixies to come. As the firstborn and most developed, I felt confident in my discovering the answer to the question all of us sought as the seasons changed. There was no longer a niggling doubt in my mind. I knew exactly how we pixies were destined to act when we came of age.

"I see no reason we can't wait until morning, sir," I said, and held the ring of keys out to him.

Unlike trying to take matters under my own wings, obedience had never once run the risk of me being fired. I wasn't sure why I'd so nearly trusted my own inexperienced mind before I trusted my boss. I still don't have a clue. I'd been a nymph curled up in his arms once, even if I couldn't remember the first hundred years of my life, and I'd survived in good health. Every pixie had. The Head Pixie bore his title for a reason. He knew exactly what he was doing.

I blinked behind my shades.

H.P. slipped the keyring over his pointer finger, then placed his palm around the back of my head. I didn't move as he pressed my nose to his shoulder and gave me two soft pats with his hand. "Good boy. Now, go find a place to sleep. It's been a rough day for all three of us."

Flappy latched his fingers around my tie and tried to throttle me. I realized I wasn't hungry anymore.

H.P. took the little clown off somewhere to teach him the trick to getting at least a birdie on one of the cape holes, but I settled down beside the palm trees and Egyptian pyramids on Hole 10. Where else was I to go?

"Two hundred and fifty-three thousand years," I murmured, touching my finger to the capstone of the smallest one. "The pyramids didn't even exist back then."

Crossing my wings, crossing my arms, I lay down and reviewed the events of the day. H.P. had made some good decisions, I thought. I couldn't find a flaw in any of them.


	3. Anti-Gonzo v. Fairy World

_**Anti-Gonzo v. Fairy World:** The ruling of _ Mintwave v. Wandflick _, that Fairies who practice magic under the influence of processed sugar shall receive triple fines and suspension of their wand for a period of up to three months (as determined by the Keeper of the Delegating Administrative Rules of the Known Universe) does not apply beyond the Fairykind on the grounds of_ Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle _, that Fairies hold no jurisdiction over other legally-recognized classes of beings so long as they act as neutral parties._

* * *

I didn't have an excuse myself, but H.P.'s was that after being attacked by Cupid and the Tooth Fairy, after our drive from Nevada to Kansas, after escaping the two humans in the cornfield, and after staying up to some forsaken hour engaged in what must have been the most intense single-player game of miniature golf in the history of pixiekind (my exaggeration, not his), he'd been exhausted.

We're talking, he must have been really, really exhausted. Like I said, I can't even begin to grasp at an excuse myself.  _To this day_ , I don't understand why I didn't wake up. That's the part that hits me most; not knowing the reason and not working to prevent it meant it had potential to happen again. And I would be completely okay with that.

I woke up smothered in blue and white hand towels, and everything smelled like chocolate and salt. My suit coat was among the pile, evidently having slipped off my injured wing during the night. I'd put it on in a minute. Before I did so, I stretched my arms out in a lazy sort of way that I'm just realizing I probably shouldn't have admitted to. My first thought was that it must be my birthday, until I was awake enough to remember that H.P. had given up trying to celebrate each one of ours individually at least seventy thousand years ago and invented a new holiday simply named Pixalchia Day. It occurred once a decade on February 12th and was the one night we were allowed to mingle with our anti-selves. Even me, although H.P. really hadn't liked letting me near Anti-Sanderson since he pulled that coup.

Regardless, I could tell I was about to have a better morning than yesterday's rude awakening of being splashed in the face with hot syrup and overcooked bacon. H.P. would twist my wings if he heard me spilling the secret, but pixies were something like the wasps of the magical world: we rolled over on our backs with all four limbs in the air, tongues panting and bellies ready to be rubbed whenever sugar hit the scene.

That, and we shared their instincts to swarm when hurt or bury ourselves in nests of paper. You really are missing out on something in life if you've never been there to watch one of the nymphs float into the basement filing room for the first time. It always begins with a piercing squeal before they dive headfirst into a drawer and stake out a claim with tiny teeth bared. We don't even keep paper shredders in the office- we just tear everything neatly in half once down the center and then chew it to a paste. There's a reason we pluck at the wallpaper for security if you chase us into the corners. And, future tip free of charge, don't overthink our holiday presents. Shiny wrapping paper is a fascination we all share. Anti-Pixies are even worse about it, but without regular access to paperwork, they tend to roll around in the colored streamers left behind when one of their fellows explodes from celebratory back-up, Anti-Caudwell tells me…

I was halfway through the M&Ms and wrist-deep in cinnamon bears before I had the sense to wonder where the candy had come from. Crunching still, I sat back on my knees. All of it lay before me, individually bagged by type, in a black wire basket bigger than my entire body. Polished granite, flecked with dark gray and gold, made up the surface below me before abruptly dropping away on the far side of the candy basket. It was a round counter, sort of a semi-circle, and ran from where I sat to my right, past a metal wall covering, and across to the other end. When I checked behind me, I found solid wood.

So we were in a small building - something like a trailer - and the wall to my left side was lined with nothing but more sweets. Shreds of M&M shell dropped from my mouth when I saw it. Almond Joys. Twizzlers. Sugar-filled drinks. SweetTarts. Chewing gum. Atomic Fireballs. Dots. Now & Laters. Mike & Ikes. Whoppers. Strawberry Laces. Lemonheads. Swedish Fish. Rocky Roads. Pez. Half a dozen candies that I couldn't even name. So many edible necklaces and gummy worms and chocolate coins and wax bottles and Fizzies and Jawbreakers that they spilled from their baskets and onto the counter. The occasional box of napkins or board listing prices was thrown in along with bags of chips that I didn't much care for, but for the most part, staring at that wall was like watching a river of flavored syrup sweep through a utopian jungle crafted by unicorns and then crash over the edge of a rock candy cliff in a total waterfall of deliciously pure sugary sin while butterflies swarmed around my head like tiny will o' the wisps.

"Heaven," I realized, and stuck an Opal Fruit on my tongue. "We've died somehow."

I considered what this meant for a few seconds, then split open the first packet of Fun-Dip. It's hard to see flaws in your situation when you have Fun-Dip.

The entire bag of Jolly Ranchers had been devoured by the time H.P. began to stir from his own heap of rags. He rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes. When he looked at me, it seemed to take him a few seconds to recognize my face, perhaps because his glasses had gone missing with my shades. Then he flipped onto his feet and jolted into the air, wings buzzing.

"Light- Overslept- We need to move before-  _What do you have in your mouth, Sanderson_?"

"Five Lik-M-Aid sticks? Wait." I counted again. "Six. Six Lik-M-Aid sticks, sir."

He stared at me, then slapped me on the back of the head so I nearly choked and my floating cap was in serious danger of being knocked from its little gravitational field. "Why would you put more than one of those in your mouth at a time? The tang blends together so all you're doing is wasting five of them that you could have otherwise used to stretch out their taste. I know I pay you to be smarter than this."

"I found Pixy Stix," I said, holding up two handfuls of open straws. H.P.'s fluffy brows lifted together. His eyes traced down my suit to my lap, stuffed with candy wrappers, to the wire basket beside me, and from there to the rest of our little snippet of heaven. He squinted.

"What in…? How long have you been awake?"

"I'm not entirely certain." My stomach churned with sugar. I pressed the backs of my wrists against my eyes. "Awhile, at least. Maybe ten minutes. I'm not feeling like I'm in prime condition anymore."

"You've gone tingle-fritzy. Just look at the mess you made of your magic lines. Fantastic. We'll give you a bit longer and see if this stuff was poisoned before I go for that chocolate bar. Oh, Sanderson, don't…"

He withdrew, some cross between annoyed and smug, as I grabbed the edge of the counter and heaved my insides over the edge. When I'd finished I kept there with my stomach firmly pressed to the granite, arms dangling, and let the Pixy Stix wrappers drift one by one between my fingers and into the gray puddle I'd left below.

"What kind of cruel, twisted paradise  _is_  this? I'd like to have a word with the one in charge of installing consequences for my actions."

H.P. licked his palm and rubbed my head to flatten the cowlick he considered so unprofessional. "You're not seventy anymore. I refuse to clean this up."

I found the strength to groan, "What was I like when I was seventy?"

He paused for several seconds, gathering together either a memory or an excuse to dodge the question, and was spared from answering when the room's screen door opened at the far end of heaven. Both of us jerked backwards, straining to  _ping_  away out of instinct, but without our starpieces we weren't any better off than downed ducks in a lake with a couple of retrievers surging towards us.

Two humans stepped into the room, but I refused to be slammed with guilt at having been caught amongst their candy. The first was taller and dressed in a simple white shirt that stood out beneath the long black strands of his hair. Some triangular sort of cloth that I didn't have a name for - at least in this sugarloaded state - hung from his waist, like slacks with both legs through the same hole. The second figure had a younger face, slicker hair, and carried a bit more weight around the middle. He hung behind the first human, but his smile wasn't any less curious or genuine.

"Good morning," said the first human, stopping a respective distance away. I'd thought that with his clean appearance (I could forgive the long hair) and the way the younger figure held back, he might be the boss of the establishment. That assumption dissipated as I realized with shock that the speaker, voice high, must be a damsel. I hadn't had much personal contact with human damsels apart from, like, Alma Schindler, Ella Fitzgerald, Carly Simon- You know, musical types that you can curl up near on a shelf and listen to them sing their pretty hearts out. And I'm not even sure it counts as personal contact if it consists mostly of me creeping into their kitchens to listen to them try out different tunes while I throw inspiring pixie dust down on their heads when they pull together something I approve of.

But being greeted by a damsel first thing in the morning, and when my stomach was already churning, only offset my mood further. Really, I thought damsels did wonderful things to this world by lending us their voices. I liked  _listening_  to them, but I didn't much… like… them. I swear, if I get assigned to one more shift at Wish Fixers and end up dragged into another flirting lesson or casual conversation over coffee that diverges into trying to set me up with some needy imp when I'm  _just trying to fix the smoofing copy machine because_  (not pointing fingers) Thanaline Sparxa forgot that magical objects repel spells that try to change their nature and  _sometimes_  have a nasty habit of bouncing such a spell back on the user and forcing them to cough up ink for the remainder of the day and somehow it's  _all my company's fault_  that this has happened on more than one occasion, and yet apparently I'm "not allowed" to explain what the problem is because I sound like I'm "talking down to a damsel" (which I guess is a real, actual problem among species that have two distinct sexes?) and this is "all that one can expect from me" because "I'm a member of a species made up entirely of beings with two ZZ chromosomes" and therefore "inherently misogynistic" (along with being a "poor, lonely soul who is too cute and sweet to have gone this long without dating anyone and who must be guilt-tripped into giving Skylette discounts and Earth flowers with no time to lose"), then I will quite possibly yank out my own teeth and pitch them through a window. But doing so would be disrespectful to the Tooth Fairy, and we can't have that.

Why am I going on about- Wasn't I supposed to be talking about something?

The damsel's eyes flicked down to the sickly mess on the floor, then back up to me without her emotions ever wavering (as near as I could figure). She continued her careful greeting with, "I very much hope you aren't upset that we moved you here into the Snack Shack. I was going to let you sleep on, but people were rattling at the gate and time is money, after all. Pretty soon, my husband and I ran out of excuses not to open. It wouldn't do, I felt, to leave any of them hitting you with balls or poking at your faces, so my son and I brought you in here so you may wake when you felt ready."

As was proper protocol, I deferred to H.P. to speak in their presence. That, and another round of bile was gathering in my mouth. At the arrival of the humans, and when his  _ping_  had failed, the Head Pixie's wings had drooped, and he'd clung to the heap of towels that had been provided for us like blankets. One of his long wasp-like wings hovered above my back. Now he gripped the rags even tighter in his fists, squinting and silent.

"… That was most kind of you," he said at last, and I could see their shoulders relax.

"What do you make of it, H.P.?" I muttered, not daring to lift myself. It was a phrase I'd almost said twice every day of my life.

He leaned his head nearer to mine as the humans examined us, apparently intrigued by our existence and struggling to restrain themselves for fear that we'd be offended and disappear. "You remember when I told you a former fairy godkid ran the place now?"

"Did you?" That note must have slipped past my awareness.

H.P. never took his eyes from the pair, even as he brought his mouth within a finger's breadth of my ear and further lowered his whisper. "Her memories were of course wiped with their separation, but I think… I think we must offer her a sense of familiarity."

I wished again to be a fairy so Jorgen might  _poof_  us home. Need I reiterate the details?

… Had he said the  _damsel_  was the one who managed the place?  _And_  had a child to raise? Does that happen? Among Fairies, it was always the drake who gave birth to the child while the damsel gathered necessary materials for raising it. After its birth, she was meant to somewhat limit her magic usage, sugar intake, and quick movements for a year as she developed milk in her breasts to provide it with nutrients that physical food couldn't, like buohyrine, to aid in floating. Too much stress kills the strain. Even pixie nymphs had milkmothers. I… preferred not to dwell on mine, nor too much on her daughter. She was a will o' the wisp and they keep harems. There's enough said there.

So I was both impressed and unnerved by the ability of this human damsel to not simply participate in work functions while raising her nymph, but to run an entire business while doing so. I think that… that was the direction I was trying to go with that.

… I wanted to be home again, perched in my soft seat in the conference room while H.P. gave one of his Friday morning lectures about quotas and self-improvement, gesturing to his chalkboard while Verona lay curled up asleep in his left arm, nibbling on a pen cap. I wondered if Longwood would be giving the weekly summary today  _ad litem_. And suddenly the thought of Verona interrupting the meeting to beg for "hold yous" annoyed me to the tip of my crumpled cap. Verona was H.P.'s offspring and Longwood had no right to act as surrogate.

"Did you find our offering satisfying?" asked the damsel, and tightened her lips after the words left her, like she regretted her decision to draw our attention back to her. The offering, I presumed, was the one basket of assorted candy that had been placed on the counter beside us. I moaned and covered my face with my arms.

H.P. lay the tip of his wing against my shoulder. I could hear mirth in his voice when he replied, "Very much so. Although I must admit, it seems my companion indulged himself upon most all of it before I awoke."

"Sugar is leaking from my nose," I mumbled.

"Yes, it is."

"Might I…?"

That was the damsel, though she stopped herself. H.P. inclined his head to allow her to speak, and so she did.

"Might I ask, what brought the two of you to our humble miniature golf course in the dredges of Kansas? I haven't seen you… before."

"Oh, passing through," H.P. answered vaguely. "I lived in this area some two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and it's the place my companion here was born. Don't concern yourself with his miserable state; it's well deserved. Have you my glasses? I can't see beyond an arm's length without them."

The damsel glanced at the drake, who drew both H.P.'s glasses and my shades from some pocket and crossed the floor towards us. H.P. held out his hands. That made the drake hesitate, but in the end he sort of shoved them into his waiting palms.

"Call me Sam. It's not my real name, but Mom says you're not supposed to hand that information out to the nature spirits or they could use it against you."

"Your name is Quincy," H.P. said.

"How did you-?"

"It's on your name tag."

Quincy looked down at his shirt. "Well, that's a bad idea."

I didn't move, so H.P. unfolded the arms of my shades and stuck them on my nose. Then he rubbed a smudge from his own lenses and put them on. As I turned my head, I saw him blink.

"Eunice Tuckfield!"

The damsel started. "I see you know my name too. Although I'm not wearing mine, so I'll admit that does surprise me."

"I… I have some connections with a friend of yours. He once dated the damsel who, er… she married the cousin of an associate of mine. Anyway, we met once, when you were younger. I suppose you don't remember that." He looked about the shack, with its inexorably-delectable treats. They called my name:  _Eat us, Sanderson! Fulfill our destiny!_  With the ends of my strength, I grasped a Hershey's bar and dragged it across the counter towards me.

H.P. took it away and unfolded the wrapper from one end. " _Manners_ , Sanderson. I haven't had a taste yet. Must we squabble over the pecking order like anencephalic chickens?"

I'm pretty sure I should have gotten assigned fairy godparents after that, because right then, I was the most miserable creature on the face of the entire planet.

I struggled to push myself into a sitting position, choking back my whimpers, as he finished off the entire bar and licked chocolate smudges from his fingers. He didn't even pretend he'd forgotten that I wanted some. "Again, I thank you for your generosity," he told Eunice and her offspring. "I am the Head Pixie himself, and we aren't nature spirits so much as spirits of wealth, and I can personally guarantee your future prosperity if you continue maintaining my beloved miniature golf course and allowing it to be a safehaven for all my kind who may stop to rest in it during their travels."

Quincy pumped his fist behind his mother's back. Eunice smiled faintly - almost distractedly - as though she'd known who we were all along.

By that point, I had examined every corner I could see of the shack, and something was starting to bother me. Dreadfully, dreadfully bother me. I lay my arm on H.P.'s sleeve and tugged the fabric.

"H.P.? Do you see Flappy Bob?"

"He was in my arms when- Oh." H.P. looked about, then lifted a handful of rags from his makeshift nest. Twice. "Oh, then. Well. That… is a thing. I'll ask. Eunice? Where is the baby?"

The light dimmed from her eyes. "What baby?"

There wasn't even a way to respond to that. H.P. and I sat there, flecked with bits of sugar and chocolate, and there was no telling what section of the golf course the baby had wandered into. Somehow, I doubted he'd be stopped for long by a sand trap.

H.P. didn't have to order me to my feet. I was up before even he was, and he caught me by the elbow when I lurched too far to the right. "We have to get out there- There's a child, a tiny… black-haired… violet-eyed…"

"Quincy-"

"I'm on it." The drake threw his red jacket on over his shirt. Inside out. Both H.P. and I twitched at the shoulders. Then he was gone before either of us could ask him to fix it. Not that it mattered, really, if he'd just accidentally rendered himself immune to pixie powers. We didn't have our starpieces on hand anyway. I stared at the screen door long after it had banged shut, feeling so very, very sick from all the sweets rolling about in my stomach.

"I'm sure Quincy's a fair scout," H.P. was saying, "but I would feel much more comfortable if Sanderson and I were out there on the hunt as well."

Eunice glanced at the metal barrier that Flappy and I had tried and failed to lift the night before, from the outside. "Er, there are patrons out there now, and I don't think it's wise to assume that all of them will accept and let living-"

" _Do you want me to revoke my blessing of prosperity upon this establishment_?"

Eunice pushed open the screen door. H.P. jumped from the counter and zipped over to it, not even sparing her a glance. Grabbing a parting handful of candy for the hunt, I sprang after him.

And  _plunged_. Never before and never since had I smacked my jaw as hard as I did that day. M &Ms scattered across the floor. My shades skimmed away with them. Head and wings and legs and arms tumbled like snowballs in an avalanche until I bumped into Eunice's shoes and blinked up at her. Bewildered, she blinked back. Her eyes darted away for half a second and she bit her lip. Ashamed on my behalf, trying to hold back a bubble of laughter… Maybe both. I had wet and gray, er, sickness splattered across my tie. The fingertips of H.P.'s right hand rested against one temple. His entire face was pinched into a pure,  _The amount of ridiculousness emanating from your entire being is severely tempting me to cut my wings clean off at the jugal folds right now,_  kind of expression.

"Sanderson, in case you have forgotten, a little human drake shot a hole through your wing yesterday when we were running through Flappy's cornfield. You can't fly until that heals up, and that will take five-to-eight business days without the influence of a starpiece."

That would probably be easier to remember if pixie wings could feel pain.

Eunice crouched down, picked up my shades, and held them out to me. I accidentally made eye contact with her for an instant when I took them back. She smiled at me like the Fairy Elder had on the day the Bit Bridge had been formed to connect Pixie World to Earth, and I'd been trying my best to be a "professional young man" while the other three hundred and twenty-three pixies ran about cheering and clapping and waving their sodas. My ears went up in flames as I lowered my gaze. Scraping the fallen candy back into my hand, I scampered out the door after H.P., who let it swing shut behind me with a low mutter.

"Oh," I said, drawing at once to a stop. Partially because of the rush of dizziness that had slammed into my head, and partially because of the view. "This place looks a great deal bigger in the light."

Greener, too. In fact, all colors were everywhere. The water glinted far bluer than the cloudy sky. Giraffe and zebra sculptures made warbled reflections across it in interesting designs. The still-rising sun pierced yellow-white between the oaks guarding the eastern end; it must have been half past eleven o'clock. Little huts and decorative sheds bore every range in the rainbow ("They painted the tallest windmill with pink polkadots!" was H.P.'s outraged remark, followed by, "There aren't windmills in Africa!").

It was true that the paint peeled from the wood in multiple places, so when I saw the entire landscape, only one word came to mind:  _Quaint_. Nothing else seemed to fit it. The shining grass, still wet with either morning dew or the splash of sprinklers, gathered in small rolling hills. And all around them, humans walked with golf clubs slung over their shoulders. Maybe twenty of them in all on this side of the shack, from a few older ones to some not much bigger than I was. Quincy ran between them, gasping out a question only to be met with startled shaking heads. H.P. grumbled something under his breath and lighted on the brick walkway beside me.

"Any clues on where we ought to begin our search, sir?"

"It's been so long now. I suppose he could have gone off anywhere. I was introducing him to the rhinos before we came to join you."

"That's a start. Er, isn't it, H.P.? I fell asleep before you two came back. Where exactly did you bed down?"

"Just two or so wingspans from you, right beside the little oasis pond on Hole 10, between the pyramids."

The Snack Shack stood, red and faded and proud, in the center of the entire course, and we had to circle around to the eastern side to see the spot in question. Together, we gazed past the lions and the cheetah mother and cubs ("I don't remember those cubs,") to the palm-dotted and sand-trap-heavy Egyptian hole. I could tell H.P. was thinking it, but of course he wasn't about to give the words life. I decided to do it for him.

"You left the baby unsupervised directly next to a pond?"

"I wasn't aware he could crawl! He was bundled in his blanket with his head on my chest, deep asleep long before I drifted off."

I tossed the M&Ms into my mouth. Hey, I wasn't about to let them go to waste. "Would this be the same pond that you tried to drown me in just after I was born, and I was spared because my amniotic sac hadn't split and so I survived via my placenta no matter how long you held me under for?"

"We are not having this conversation right now, Sanderson." H.P. rubbed the knuckles of his left hand as he leaned back against his maple tree. "Did Flappy show any signs of favoritism towards a particular area when you were perusing with him?"

"… No. No, I don't believe so."

"I do hope the crocodiles didn't get him."

"The metal crocodiles, sir?"

"Any luck yet?" Eunice asked from behind us, and we both jerked up our wings.

"Erm…" H.P. twisted his hands. "Not as such yet, no, thank you. We were about to search around the Sphinx."

"Your wings are whirring," she noted. "Someone might see that."

"It can't be helped."

"I think it can be. If you stay here, I'll grab the golf cart, unless my husband already rented it out to someone, but we ought to be able to situate you both in the rear basket and throw my coat over you. I'll drive and you can scan behind for-"

"Hey!" cried a spritely child's voice. Automatically, H.P. and I tried to trigger our fagiggly glands - I could see it from the way he wrinkled his brow - to no avail. We spun around to find a tiny damsel dressed in brown and white at the corner of the Snack Shack, gawking. One finger went up to point. "Dad! Dad, look look look! Fairies! Real fairies! With wings!"

"We're pix-"

Everything died on my lips when the arm circled around me. I yipped and squirmed, then tried to twist so I could bite. My captor had me around the chest, and though I kicked and bent, I couldn't get a fair nip on skin. "Stop that," Eunice mumbled as she turned and started speedwalking down the slight rise towards Hole 11. Her fingers crawled along my side as she readjusted her grip. "I'm getting you away from the shack fast. I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

"Sanderson," H.P. snapped from his place at her other arm. "Behave yourself."

Behave myself? After this betrayal? I kept my teeth embedded in Eunice's sleeve, panting hot pants. My wings were crumpled between her torso and my back. Pressure was building against my chest. If my stomach took a sharp jar, I was going to be sick again. The little comfort I did draw from H.P. was that he didn't appear to like being held by an unfamiliar human, past experience with a fairy godparent or not, any more than I did, but he didn't see the need to struggle.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know this can't be comfortable or usual for you, but I have to give off the impression that you're toys or decorations. Trust me, I know little Anita's father and he isn't the type either of you will ever want to meet. He doesn't believe humanoid creatures with wings could ever exist, and since you're so small and well-dressed, you don't exactly blend in with the rest of the patrons. He'd be very interested in tearing open your insides and… Can't you disguise yourselves somehow? I feel like you should be able to do that."

"Normally, yes, and we would have when you first startled us in the shack. However, the wands we use to channel our magic were stolen by Cupid and the Tooth Fairy yesterday."

"Oh," Eunice said, taken back a couple of ticks.

I chewed deeper into her sleeve, not trying to swallow it so much as swallow my rising distress. My wrists could twitch, but my arms wouldn't bend. My wings didn't have room to flutter, and they really wanted to flutter. Every step bumped me up and down, so I felt like I was darting through an ice storm. A thin trail of gray dribbled from my mouth. I didn't like being touched. I didn't like being held. My unspoken rule was that no one was allowed to hug me. No one except some of the anti-pixies so drunk on sugary sodas that they could hardly keep themselves on two feet, and a few of my coworkers that I happened to like. And Flappy Bob, who couldn't walk for himself and needed to be cradled like a fragile thing, since fragile things could break and be lost.

I started to chew like Wilcox on a bundle of carrots.

Eunice stopped in front of a shed some ways beyond the crowds and loosened her arms. H.P. flared his wings and kept aloft near her shoulder, but I lunged for the ground, hit, and flashed towards the nearest shrub. "There ought to be one in here," she muttered, pulling a key on a cord from beneath the collar of her shirt. "I don't think it should have… There we go, just a little…" She cast me a glance as she jabbed the key into the padlock. "I didn't hurt you, did I? For some reason I thought your wings didn't have the nerves to feel if they were awkwardly bent. I don't know why I thought that. Actually, I didn't even think about it. That was really rude of me. I really am sorry for grabbing you without first-"

"Ignore him," H.P. said. He snapped his fingers twice and pointed to the ground below him. "Sanderson."

I skulked over to his shadow as Eunice pulled the door open. Her face crumpled. Her arms slapped either side of her legs. "It must be out on the course already. It  _is_  seniors-get-in-half-off day. I'm sorry. I really hoped this would work."

"That's no real bother," H.P. said, examining a stain of chocolate he had just found on the hem of his sleeve. "I'll get a view from the air and focus my attention on the northern holes. You and Sanderson can search the southern portion. If you carry him, the fact that he's a living pixie won't be obvious."

I stiffened, my fist still against my face. I'd been in the process of wiping away any hint that I was still sick from my overdose of sugar. "I don't mean to question your decision, H.P., but-"

"Then don't."

"Sir, I don't intend any offense, but I would rather we didn't-"

"Sanderson, you can't fly and you hardly stand up. I seriously doubt your ability to walk in a straight line. I don't want to risk leaving you here and losing both Flappy  _and_  you. Go with Eunice. I'll cover ground much faster on my own."

"I'd rather kiss a brownie, sir."

She bit her lip. "Are you sure you'd rather we split up? What about you?"

He patted her shoulder, smiling thinly. "I'll be celebrating my seven hundred and forty-five thousandth birthday before the next millennia is out. I can manage myself."

"Fair. Fair… Just, shout either mine or Quincy's names if you get into any trouble."

"I don't expect to, but I will take that information into account, thank you. Sanderson? Don't cause trouble for her."

"Yes, sir."

H.P. sped away, keeping near the trees and relatively low. At one point he paused and landed, staring at something over a short hill, before taking off again. He vanished behind a tiny hut on the empty Hole 14, skirted two little damsels, and angled for the Snack Shack and nine holes beyond.

"Well," Eunice said, watching him go. "Shall we head southside?"

"I would prefer to walk." I tottered away from the shed door as Eunice heaved it shut, my arms and wings held out to either side. There was a slight wobble in my step, but I attributed that more to lack of experience on the ground than struggling through a sugar crash. Satisfied, I nodded. That almost knocked me off my feet. I pretended I had paused to examine a yellow leaf in the grass.

Eunice finished locking up the shed and followed me along the dirt path. It led down and around the curve of Hole 16, then wound back up to 17. The final hole - the Zimbabwe hole, with its scale Victoria Falls - was beyond that, with the park entrance a short ways off. No one was coming in at the moment, but there were humans about nonetheless, and as I watched, another grimy car pulled into the parking lot.

I hesitated, eyeing the fluffy tops of human hair that bobbed above the next hill. My wings twitched at the pterostigmata. Refusing to process what I was doing, I backed along the path the way I had come, lay one hand against Eunice's knee, and ducked behind her leg.

"I'd better pick you up."

I shook my head, rattling my shades.

"The Head Pixie said-"

"I don't like being restrained."

"They're going to see you."

In answer, I tightened my grip on her calf. They wouldn't be able to dissect me if they couldn't pry me away first. I wasn't going to let them scoop me up. They'd drop me once I bit the thin web of skin between their forefinger and thumb; they always did. Anti-Wanda and H.P. had been the only ones I'd ever seen take a nipping from a furious pixie without quickly making the decision to let them go. And if the humans didn't drop me, I'd yell for H.P to sweep to my rescue. Even if they gagged me, he'd still come if I ended up injured. He always had before. Thick pheromones ran through my bloodstream, ready to trigger the swarming instinct once they came in contact with the air.

"I'm going to pick you up," Eunice warned, shrugging out of her coat. In response, I readied my teeth. But before I could have threatened her, she dropped the coat over me.

 _Inside out_.

The world was a dark place.


	4. Sparkletail v. Whimsifinado

_**Sparkletail v. Whimsifinado:** Pixies may manufacture and distribute starpieces for pixie use alone. Any Pixie-manufactured starpiece which finds itself in non-pixie hands shall be terminated immediately upon its first use; Pixies may, however, retain their jurisdiction over the magic lines surrounding the Big Wand for the clients they inherited from Twinkletuft, so long as such clients should wish to remain covered by them._

* * *

From where I'd fallen on my side, I struggled to lift my hand and touch the soft fabric of the coat. Had Eunice dropped it over me inside out on purpose? An old memory from her days as a fairy godkid?

It didn't really matter. I lay there with my cheek in the dirt, helpless as a Fairy under a butterfly net. Not that we pixies didn't share the netting curse, but… Hey, I've seen Anti-Fairies steer away from an entire collapsed mirror factory just because some plastic horseshoe or shamrock decoration is lying in front of the door, and our fairy cousins seem to have been shuffled a deck of anxiety issues when around large fish just like the dragonflies who share their superb vision and ability to fly backwards. We all have our quirks. As Eunice started up a distracted conversation with the patrons who must have crested the hill, I stuffed my cleaner fist inside my mouth and howled.

Hands closed around my middle and lifted me from the grass. I thrashed once, only to be rewarded with a warning squeeze. A drake said words and Eunice laughed at them, like she wasn't crushing all the energy from my body. My wings beat in a helpless manner. My scratching nails had no chance of piercing skin through the coat. As I drooped in her grip, folding up on myself automatically, I found myself wondering if Eunice committed murders with that same relaxed posture and light smile in her voice.

"Good luck getting under par past those elephants," she called after their departing forms, and another damsel answered, "We're hoping for a few holes in one today; have a good rest of the morning, Eunice!"

"You're a slippery bugger, aren't ya?" she muttered to me as she folded back the part of her coat that covered my head. I tried to jolt from her arms, but she still held me firm, and anyway, the reversed coat still covered my body from the neck down. "Hey. Hey, you're fine, Sanderson. Relax. Breathe. You can fight me all you want, but I have six and a half cats. I'm not going anywhere. Hey. Shh, shh…"

I glared up at her black eyes, embedded like olives among a scattering of crow's feet. Then I remembered she probably couldn't see me through my shades, and since I couldn't wriggle a hand out to tilt them down, I had to settle for shaking my head hard enough to send them flying off. They skidded over gravel and dirt in the walking path.

"Can we talk?" Eunice waited for a response that didn't come, then went on. "I'm fairly sure neither of us want to get yelled at by the Head Pixie, and both of us want to find your missing baby."

Those words made me blink. In my disgust at being treated like an animal, I'd entirely forgotten about Flappy Bob.

She seemed to notice this. "I know you don't like being restrained, and I don't want to force you through any unpleasant ordeal. You're in bad enough shape as it is. So, if you agree not to bite me after I untangle you, then I'll hold my arms very loosely. Just enough so that your wings keep hidden. We can leave the coat to cover them, but at least the rest of you will be free. If you don't squirm, someone might mistake you for a three-foot-tall decorative lawn gnome."

"We're pixies."

Eunice, never taking her eyes from mine, shifted her arms so she had one hand free, as though she thought I were in a position to shake. "Then do we have a deal?"

I stilled my wings as she drew me back into a scenario I was familiar with. That question was chocolate pudding to any pixie worth a quarter of a salt shaker. Forcing down the rippling urge to jump on it, I considered her proposal. It was reasonable enough, really… Flappy was out there. Worse humans than Eunice were out there. H.P. had asked me to stick beside her. I'd protested because every instinct told me not to put myself in a position that I couldn't escape from if the world should turn against me, and particularly when I lacked a way to channel magic. If Eunice's hold remained as loose as she was implying, then - theoretically - I would still have the option to flee.

I gave my wary assent, on the condition that her coat covered my wings right side out, and I could take two more handfuls of candy from the Snack Shack before H.P. and I made our final departure. She agreed with only a few seconds' hesitation. Half a moment later, and just before the next couple passed us on their way to Hole 16, I was curled up against the crook of her left arm, sort of perched  _on_  it rather than pinned like a brownie's bowtie to her chest. My fingers rested against the soft inside of her elbow, and Eunice draped the coat the correct way over my back. She'd retrieved my shades.

It still wasn't an ideal situation as far as I was concerned, but I chose to hold my tongue. Flappy had cried and hit me when I'd walked across the golf course with him. That hadn't done either one of us a favor.

"Sanderson," Eunice said as we examined the rosebushes lining the for-now-deserted Hole 15, "tell me about yourself."

"… About myself?"

She readjusted her grip on me (loose, as promised) so she could use the other hand to push dark strands of hair behind her round ear. "Sure. What do pixies do when they aren't running around miniature golf courses smack in the middle of Kansas? Where do you live and how have you avoided human notice? Or haven't you? What are you interested in? How long have you been doing that? What's your favorite snack food? Do you like Earth more or less now than a hundred or a thousand years ago? How was yesterday? What toppings would you prefer on a pizza if I were to make you one? That's what I mean by 'about yourself'."

A blank line appeared in my brain. No one had ever asked me questions like that before. Not even Hadrian at the shrine of the Tuatha Dé Danann the day Hawkins and I had been baptized. I pushed my shades further up my nose, feeling like they weren't there at all. "Why do you want to know?"

"Small talk."

"Is there also such a thing as tall talk?" Partly insulted (Not counting my cowlick, I  _am_  the shortest grown pixie by the width of my wing- oh, the price one pays for a nymphhood spent on milk and worms and acorns) and partly amused, "Are you saying that because I myself am small?"

Eunice crouched down beside the third rosebush, chuckling under her breath. "Is that just a humans' thing? I thought that if we were going to be working together for the better part of half an hour or so, maybe I should get to know you. 'Small talk' is simply a name given to light, casual conversation to encourage friendliness and reassure you that I intend you no harm. Without small talk… Well, I guess we'd only greet one another if we planned to discuss newsworthy events or important business deals."

Flashbacks of Wish Fixers, the copy machine, and Skylette swarmed in my brain. I happened to like discussing only important business deals.

"I work for Pixies Incorporated," I began, selecting my words carefully. Eunice gave up on the rosebush and advanced to an array of ferns along the path. As she moved, I scanned the surrounding rises for any sign of Flappy Bob. I didn't see him, but I caught a distant flash of wasp-like wings as H.P. darted from behind an iron-cast zebra decoration to a giraffe. One of the nearby humans started, but seemed to brush the sighting off.

My fingers had apparently found a bandage just beneath Eunice's sleeve and, considering it to be paper, begun to pluck at it before I'd realized what I was doing. I stopped. "It started just over two hundred thousand years ago. I'd left my nymph stage behind, but I didn't yet have my adult set of wings, and wouldn't for a long while. The company had simple origins. The Head Pixie was interested in gathering money so he might buy out the family business from his fa- his sire, and so he went about to various magical races - fairies, elves, selkies, brownies, anti-fairies, huldufólk, goblins, imps, gnomes, ishigaq, sprites, hobs, leprechauns, far darrig, trolls, mermaids, finfolk, harpies, barbegazi, druids, púca, swanee, cherubs, duende, will o' the wisps, you name the kind - he went about to anyone whom he could find and offered to help them struggle through the lengthy bundles of paperwork that tended to pile up on their dusty cabinet shelves."

"So many?"

That made me smile in a rueful way. "Magic-users, you see, are so used to getting what they want with a flick of the wrist that they simply haven't developed the proper patience to wrangle legal documents written on chesberry parchment or threedspiral papyrus, or one of the other magical plants that resists any attempt to alter the terms and conditions found therein. Oftentimes, deadlines are distant or unsettled at all. We tend to live long lives and few are ever in a rush."

"No deadlines," she mused. "Must be nice."

"Of course, as a result, so much of the work simply ends up unfinished by the time the contractor reappears to claim his dues. Then would come the panicked scrambles, the pawning, the money lending…" Briefly pausing at the sound of human voices from the hole over, I gave a shrug. "Riots and muggings and gangs were a daily hazard for those who wandered the streets of Fairy World in those times. And then the Anti-Fairies began waging war. Eastkal, the last prince of the fairies, was assassinated… Guarding the treasury, some insist, though I can't confirm that, even though I was… Well. The king surrendered all power to the Fairy Council after his death and went into hiding. Both before and after the war, we were kept busy. It was horrid chaos."

"I imagine it was." With the ferns examined, Eunice crossed towards one of the thicker beds of tulips. "Were they grateful for his help?"

"Very much so. Within a few short centuries, he was no longer poring over papers  _with_  his clients, but being  _poof_ ed- er, shipped them. Of course he would complete the work and upon its return always urge the one who had given it to him to study it carefully, and they did for a time. Personally, however, I believe within a millennium or two, the idea that we might make a mistake in such a task became entirely laughable. It's incredible what slips by them, really, how few actually bother to ensure it's all correct… They give it to us, we give it back, they send it off to wherever it's meant to be, and they never face any unpleasant or unforeseen consequences. That's what they know, and it satisfies them."

"How did you come to work for the Head Pixie?"

I sunk into her coat instead of answering. A trio of humans, somewhere around Quincy's age, had arrived to try our hole. After Eunice finished checking the tulips, she crossed the tiny wooden bridge that led across a stream and to Hole 14. People milled around there too, but we didn't stay long; we'd watched H.P. give the place a quick check before he'd headed further north.

"When did you get involved, Sanderson?" Eunice prompted as we left in search of Hole 13. Before I continued, I plucked at the sleeves of her coat. It was warm; I was warm. Coming on to 11 or 11:30 in the morning, maybe, and still no sign of Flappy Bob. Not a clowny giggle.

"I was essentially born into the work. Filing papers, managing records, running messages, making copies, managing funds, drawing up explanations, taking complaints… There are the fairies. Chaotic, wild- a very limited sense of responsibility."

I realized too late that I might be prodding Eunice's childhood memories, and I hoped she wouldn't accuse me of exaggerating, or whatever lies about my kind that her godparent would have tried to leave her with. Still, I unfolded and refolded my wings, pulling the coat nearer to my neck at the next sign of approaching humans.

"Recently H.P. has been working to further expand the reaches of the company to an, er, even more global scale. However, the Fairies have taken to accusing us of running a monopoly. We haven't messed with any contracts or information in the actual paperwork, and haven't suffered any sort of market-crash-like scenario that involved us losing valuable records- nothing like that. We file everything in triplicate. Times are changing as the rising generation becomes more and more involved with paperwork, and they often question where we stand, as they were not there to see the company's humble origins. We're hoping Fl- that child we're looking for, will put an end to their arguing."

Nothing I said was untrue. The trouble with the Fairies had all begun when Elliot Twinkletuft lost his fortune to his damefriend's sticky fingers, and was pressured by some mob or rival to sell his wand-making business. He hadn't really known how to publicize the sale, and H.P. had been intrigued enough that he took it off his hands for a lofty price. We do that sort of thing; fairies are no less frivolous with their money than they are their magic, and we tend to end up the highest bid. Twinkletuft's rival had thrown a fit, but there was nothing he could do- all the legal documents were in order, and as usual we hadn't broken any laws.

Regardless, nervous protests broke out across Fairy World regarding Fairy wands being manufactured by the hands of another class of beings altogether, and the Council members had decided to get involved. A deal was struck; Twinkletuft's business would remain in Pixie hands, but only for Pixie use (Porter is the designer of the company, and seeing as he enjoys the work so much, H.P. allows him to put the place to use. This century's model was the ballpoint pen, and I found them a vast improvement over the quills and inkwells of the 1800s that required both hands).

However, H.P. had argued for a month that we pixies hadn't done anything wrong, and we were technically an offshoot of the fairies anyway as he himself was born one, genetic mutation notwithstanding. For all intents and purposes, we were simply fairies that chose to set our place of work in the Kansas skies. He'd gotten a scoffing slap on the wrist for having fought so hard and long to be recognized as a distinct race only to turn around and play the 'no different than you' card, but the Council had relented.

Though we remained forbidden to manufacture wands for Fairy use, we were allowed to keep Twinkletuft's patrons and the monthly payments associated with them. Nothing in this life is free, even magic, and someone has to be paid for being willing to attend to the Big Wand and untangle the magic lines that get all crossed and muddled by wands waving from multiple corners of the universe at the same time. I'd come to dread that job from day one when I ended up in the crossfire of a spell that sent diamonds and roses pouring from my mouth every time I tried to speak. First day! Thorns stabbing my cheeks! Jagged rocks tumbling down my throat! Jensen and Saddler, the latter having been turned into an armadillo, had to drag me out where the magical pool was thinner, and then we'd had to spend an hour deciphering the entire spell to its core before we could snap the defense code and pour reversal fluid over it. Who even wishes for something like that?

But, any Fairy who was upset by the idea of pixies monitoring their magic could return their starpieces (for a fee) and, if they were willing to  _poof_ over and sign the paperwork, as per usual, switch to a rival benefactor. Go on- Guess how many took up that offer when they found out they'd have to declare their distrust for us while we stared them down across the table.

We could neither approve nor reject wishes - that was to be the von Strangle bloodline's task alone, so long as the Fairy Elder held the deed to Fairy World - but we simply made it our duty to document the result of every wave of their wands. The fact that nothing got lost in our filing rooms was to be our saving grace. Each spell came at a price, yes, and Twinkletuft had done the smart thing and added the automatic payment feature into every wand he made.

It was easy, then, for us to hand-deliver the debits throughout the last week of every month. Long-lasting spells continue to drain funds every passing day, and as it turns out, even the prodigal fairies don't like to see their resources disappear unnecessarily. If a wish has not been undone, they'll know before too long. It saves them a great deal of money. And within the decade, thousands of them were flocking to us. No rival had the filing experience or the meticulous staff to compete. It turned out to be a blessing that we didn't spend resources manufacturing wands- eager clients bought them elsewhere and switched to us as managers of their magic lines. Thus, Pixie wealth cannonballed upward and we found ourselves in the comfortable position we did today.

All this I relayed to Eunice between periods I ducked beneath her coat as we made our way through Holes 12, 11, 18 when a drake voiced that he feared we were stalking him, 17, 10 across the stepping stones (several frustrated humans were trying to free their balls from the sand trap between the pyramids), and finally 9 near the front gate. That was about where I ran out of ways to distract myself from the fact that Flappy hadn't yet been found.

"It just amuses me," I said, repeating myself for perhaps the third time. "Everything goes through us nowadays. I mean,  _everything_. Every business deal, every contract, every loan request, every shipping order, every delivery, every exchange that isn't simply from one neighbor to another. If it involves paperwork, it passes through Pixie hands and gets stored somewhere among our files. The only ones who don't bother with us are the mafia types, and that suits u-"

"Excuse me. I might have seen something rustle." Eunice knelt beside a few wide hippo sculptures basking on their sides near the oasis, but a fat magpie shot off before she had even set me down. Sigh. "Go on."

I scratched my shoulder. "I'd finished, really. In summary, I am H.P.'s eldest offspring. This is the work I've performed my entire life - all the work I've learned to love - and I can't imagine doing anything different, especially without him."

"So are you in training to be his successor? Is that why you're on this journey with him?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation. If I didn't tell her, Eunice would never find out that my highest position was head of the complaints department. In both senses of the word, it was my business; she didn't need to know.

"Well, I'm sure you'll make a fine one. Your father must be very proud of you."

"Who?"

"The Head Pixie?"

I nodded, untying and then retying my tie. "I usually call him 'boss'."

"I've kept my eyes out for him, but he must be good at hiding from humans. I know he intended to search the other side of the Snack Shack, but still, I haven't seen a trace since we parted ways. I'd hoped he might  _ping_  back to check on us." Pause. "That was weird.  _Come_  back to us, I meant."

I didn't reply.

"You don't suppose something could have happened to him, do you?"

Instead of answering, I pointed to the soft yellow bundle, spotted with red, that floated among the reeds lining the stream that ran through Hole 9. Like most of the holes featuring water, it had a decorative wooden bridge spanning its widest point. If I hadn't been at precisely the height of Eunice's chest, and she hadn't been standing the precise distance away, I might have missed seeing the cloth snagged between the rocks.

We waited for half a moment before the area cleared of humans. Then, without speaking either, Eunice stepped into the stream and waded (stepping, really) over to the bridge. I had to cling to her shoulder as she stretched out, swiping for the motionless blanket. When she pulled it free and lifted the soiled, dripping mass from the water, she closed her eyes and breathed out a long sigh.

"Empty."

My arms trembled around her neck as she readjusted her hold on me. "He didn't drown?"

"He at least didn't drown  _here._ "

It was something. Still, my stomach churned with enough misery to have turned the magic particles in my blood a deep emerald. If I'd only had my starpiece, I could have channeled enough energy from the air to activate my fagiggly gland, shift into a bloodhound, and track Flappy down by the scent. If I'd only been more patient and not handed him off to H.P. in the midst of his sobbing. If I'd only offered to watch him while H.P. finished his game of golf. If I'd only taken him back to the truck and gone off in search of food the way I'd almost wanted to. If I'd only stayed awake long enough to prevent him from crawling off. If I'd…

… If Flappy had been crying because he was hungry, then…

I lifted my head. The whole course was divided into two separate sets of nine holes each, with one passing on either side of the Snack Shack and then curving away in opposite directions, either north or south. Both began near the entrance gate. Giving a quick glance to see if some human caught sight of me but not putting the effort into noticing whether they did, I trotted along the concrete sidewalk and took hold of the chain-link fence that separated me from the parking lot. The truck stood exactly where H.P. and I had left it, mere inches from the dark purple dumpster. The three (well, two and a half) trash bags remained at its side. But the moldy bread slices and broken corn chips were gone.

"Sanderson?"

Ignoring Eunice, I searched along the bottom of the fence until I found the hole I had landed beside when I'd slipped from the top. The dirt around it had been scuffed up with tiny prints. Just yesterday morning, the thought of smearing dirt across my suit would have repulsed me, and I might have scampered back to Eunice and had her carry me through the open gate instead. But, bruised as I was from the lizallicopter attack (Stupid contract), and after a night of sleeping in coarse sand,  _and_  a morning of coating my hands with chocolate and sugary powder and then throwing up on myself, I didn't much care anymore. That was why I didn't wait to go around, you see, really. Dropping to my belly, I squirmed through the hole.

"Sanderson?" Eunice called again, a thread of hope running through her voice.

My wings caught. I stiffened, stuck fast with my left arm through the hole beside my head, and the right trapped on the side with my legs. Once more I tried to claw my way through, but that didn't work- in fact, I thought I heard the injured one tear further. Nor did it help that, as the thought of getting stuck sunk in, my wings began to flutter. I jolted backwards, but my head bashed against torn metal and held me in place. It wouldn't… It wouldn't fit? What was blocking-?

 _The cap_! My stupid floating cap, bobbing after me on some stupid invisible cord, had wedged itself into the stupid hole between my stupid head and the stupid fence. If it had been a natural cap of soft fabric like those of the elves and the brownies, then maybe,  _maybe_  it would have loosened when I twisted my neck. But hidden under that cap was my splintered crown, identical to the one of mangled collagen and calcium H.P. had been born with, that would have declared me a legal fairy if he hadn't contracted that genetic "equiangular" mutation before he was born. Two of the crown's points must have wedged themselves around the chains through the cloth, and I couldn't- I couldn't- I tried-

" _Snk_! Heh heh heh. You look ridiculous. My fattest cat skitters his haunches in that exact way when he gets caught between the oven and the fridge."

I found that to be an ungrounded assumption. Anti-Fairies were the haughty cat-types who mocked mankind every twenty minutes of every day. Brownies, gnomes, and fairies looked up to humans because they were soft cowards, but we pixies considered them to be on equal level with us, the same as the leprechauns and the will o' the wisps and the elves. That's why it was so rude when humans  _chased us through cornfields and shot holes through our wings like a certain grubby child I could point fingers at._

Eunice's hands - I hoped they were Eunice's hands - fell on my back. My wings whipped hard against her skin, and she might have flinched (I don't know?) but she didn't draw away. "Sanderson," she said.

"Hey!" someone else said.

 _That_  time I felt her flinch. I lashed my legs, digging the toes of my once-shiny shoes into the dirt and shoving with all my strength. There had to be remnants of some sugar high in me somewhere, didn't there? I  _had_  eaten nearly that entire basket of candy myself. Once, Wilcox had gone into quarter form when we'd attempted to cheat a vending machine while H.P. was in the Faeheim hospital. He'd almost trapped himself inside with his wand out of reach, and it always gave me chills when he told the story in the dark. That was how I felt now. When my shades fell from my nose then, I nearly poked my eye out on the left arm. My shoulder scratched one of the broken chain links, drawing a blazing line of pink blood that ran along my neck and dripped onto the end of my tie. The scent of it stung my nose. A second kick- third- fourth- No use, no use!

"Animal control sedated that cat when he got stuck among the neighbor's new cabinets too far back to reach," Eunice mused, leaning a little further over me. To conceal me from the approaching human, maybe, but more likely to simply crush me. "Then we had to saw through to reach him. Last month, he scratched himself on this same fence and the wound got horribly infected."

She was telling me- She was telling me this  _now_?

"I hope that's a cat or a rabbit and not a skunk," said the strange voice, accompanied by heavy feet crunching fallen leaves into cement. "You get stuck there, li'l fella? Let's see if we can't… Holy moley!"

Fingers ran along my head. Eunice's, I'm sure, studying my cap but hesitant to pull in case it should hurt me (it wouldn't, no more than dragging on the collar of her shirt would hurt her). I considered crying out for her to push on it hard, even if it temporarily ground my face into the dirt, but my teeth were clamped shut by grass and… W-well, er… panic.

"Uh… Mrs. Tuckfield, that's… that's not one of your cats. You shouldn't be touching-"

I didn't hear the rest of what he said, because all my focus was snapped up by the piercing sound of a baby's wail. Still on my side, I strained my neck so I could peer at the dumpster. "Get Flappy," I muttered, to either Eunice or myself. I spat mud from my lips.

"I thank you for your concern, Mr. Steamer, but I can handle this matter on my own. Don't let me distract you from enjoying your day. Come on, Sanderson," Eunice whispered then, not even hissing on the 'S' sound like she wasn't moving her lips. "Push…"

"Mrs. Tuckfield!" Her hands wrenched from my back. "We don't know what that thing is-"

"This is my miniature golf course and I wish you would let me attend to it, Mr. Steamer!"

"-but it looks like some kind of living lawn gnome or devilish spirit or mutated-"

"We're pixies."

The voice was calm, even, dull. Still, it cut through the noise of their argument, the clanking of the fence, and Flappy's crying, and froze my blood. I twisted my head upwards, and I could only assume that the humans did the same.

H.P. hovered over my head, black shoes level as though he were standing, rather than pointed downward. That was the posture he took whenever Caudwell floated, twitching, outside the door to Headquarters because the sound of rustling paper drove him too insane to consider coming  _inside_  to talk to anyone, and was my first indication that he would rather be anywhere but here. His arms were crossed over his chest. Not even in a threatening way. He was merely observing.

"I'm going to fetch my gun," Mr. Steamer whimpered.

"You're dreaming," Eunice muttered back. I heard her call to someone else that everything was all right.

"Mr. Steamer. Mr. Harold Steamer. Oh yes, I remember you. You were Archer's summer project a few years ago. Your dairy took a nasty spill, if you forgive me the pun, and he helped you get back on your feet. You moved onto publishing, didn't you? I must confess that I haven't been watching, but clearly you've been managing fine, if you can afford to spend a few hours here. Could I ask you to step away from my compatriot there beneath the fence? He doesn't like you whatsoever and you're giving him capture myopathy."

I suddenly remembered that I was stuck, and resumed the fruitless struggle to free my arm. Eunice crouched beside me again, I imagine, making little effort to suppress her snickers.

"I… I… Uh, I'm a Christian man, devil! You have no power over me!"

H.P. brought himself closer to the fence and set his fingers through the links. I heard Harold Steamer stumble back. "In that case, let me rephrase myself. Don't concern yourself with my assistant, be on your merry way, and speak of this encounter to no one if you value your place in heaven."

Simple enough instructions, but Harold Steamer chose to tear back to the gate and across the parking lot, hollering about grabbing his rifle. H.P. sighed.

"Never fails. Why all the guns, Eunice? I can see why we all do our utmost to prevent our starpieces from falling into human hands; your trigger fingers are a marvel in themselves. Well, there's no help for it." H.P. lowered himself to my level and held out his hand. "Give me the keys to the truck, Sanderson."

"… Sir?"

"Never mind. You're in no condition to cooperate. Eunice?" Briefly, he released the fence to push his slipping glasses back into place. "Check his pockets and get me the ring of keys."

"Uh… I don't think I can bring myself to, um, do a pat-down or anything-"

"H.P., Flappy's behind the dumpster."

"And he can stay there. Keys?"

Eunice wriggled her hand beneath my jacket. I tried to kick her off, unable to tear my gaze from H.P.'s stoic face. My tongue curled up hot and dry in my mouth.

"Do you plan to- plan to abandon me like you did in Flappy's cornfield, sir?"

He didn't blink. "Sanderson, you're looking too deeply into this."

"The Pixie race must survive before the individuals!  _That's what you always say_!"

"Calm. Down!" H.P. smacked my forehead with the back of his hand. "You're siphoning up the energy field. I don't have time for this."

"I- I can't find the keys," Eunice stammered. "I'm sorry, I just-"

That made H.P. snap his fingers. "Right," he said, "Sanderson gave them to me." He checked his own jacket, then drew out his hand with a jingle. Without one more word, he spun around and zipped off. Ring in fist. Key in truck. Door open. Harold Steamer drew his rifle from the rear of his own mud-spattered pick-up. The barrel aimed haphazardly into the sky as he searched for bullets to stuff in it, probably.

I squeezed my eyelids shut. I'd thought often that I would surrender myself for H.P. and the company should it ever come down to it. He'd given me everything, including my life, and it seemed only fair. I'd thought it so much that I'd even believed it. But… But…

Eunice's fingers pressed hard between my wings. With her other hand she dragged on my feet. "We'll get you out," she promised, her voice hardly quavering. Her left hand wriggled through the chain links near my face. "This is my course and I won't let him shoot you. You're fine. I just need you to- Ow! Don't bite, I'm just trying to- Oh, no. No, no. He  _isn't_."

'He', it took me a few seconds to realize, was H.P. Still spitting from Eunice's blood, I looked up. And instantly, I was scrambling harder.

H.P. had laid one careful hand on the barrel of the gun and, as Steamer stood there whimpering, pushed it back down to the bed of the truck. H.P.'s eyes were on his as he murmured soothing words. There were green bills in his other hand that he must have taken from our truck's glovebox. He was trying to offer a bribe for silence, so he didn't see Steamer's hand drawing the pocketknife from the back of his pants.

"Mr. Steamer!" Eunice snapped, abandoning me. "There is no place for that on my property! Harold, I warned you-"

The knife zipped up, swiping a gash across H.P.'s left cheek that spurted purple and knocking his glasses into the road. Sooner than it maybe should have, the familiar intertwined scents of melting butter, stinging peppermint, and sopping dog hair swam across the roof of my mouth until my eyes watered. The knife completed its upward slice and flashed back down for his neck. It connected before Eunice could grab his shoulders and H.P. could wrench away, the blood shifting from purple into pink.

Everything dropped away beneath my being, and I was floating. I clawed at the dirt until my fingernails turned black and clawed a little longer until they tore and bled and  _I could do nothing_! No escape- never escape- no use screaming- may as well be dead- I lay there gasping until Eunice's husband had been summoned to interfere. At long last, when I had stopped watching and buried my face in my sleeve, she crept back to me with H.P. bundled in her jacket.

"He's fine," she reassured me, setting him down so he could squirm out and shake his wings. "He's all fine- the cheek cut is a little deep, but he's not severely hurt. Shh, shh, don't panic, Sanderson, he's fine, you're both going to be fine…"

"He knows; you don't have to bother telling him. He tends to overreact about these sorts of things," H.P. said, patting his face and flicking pink droplets away with his fingertips. "Too easily he forgets how we're immortal. It's fortunate we are- See that scrape on the back of his neck? It has even more red than green leaking out, which you don't see often. Quite a bit of it around here is red, in fact, which means it was carrying too much adrenaline to his brain for too long. It seems as though capture myopathy has taken over his system. If he were mortal, he'd be dead right now." He sat back on his knees. "But, fortunately, this fence problem is easily fixed. The nymphs are often squeezing themselves between the filing cabinets and finding themselves unable to withdraw their wings and pull back. All you need to do, Sanderson, is relax."

Pressing my lids tight to my eyeballs, I shook my head.

"Just breathe, Sanderson."

H.P. ruffled my hair. "You can't stop a magical being from hyperventilating that way, because we don't need to breathe. We can sigh, yes, and speak, yes, but the concept of breathing is one that's difficult to grasp. It simply isn't an instinct for us in the first place, which makes stopping the gasping that much harder. Technically, what you see him doing here is, he's struggling to draw every fleck of loose magic in the area towards him. Hence why I'm beginning to lose my power to hover. We take in magic through our pores, drinking through the magical lines that connect us to the energy field."

"Hm. You must be excellent swimmers if you don't need air, then."

"Actually, no." H.P. gave up his attempt to stay aloft and settled himself in the grass. "Apart from mermaids, sea serpents, and selkies, you'll almost never catch a magical being in the water.  _Especially_  fairies. Their wings resemble those of dragonflies, meaning that they scrunch when wet and they cannot fly (So only a fairy who hadn't mentally progressed from the nymph stage, I think, would willing choose to submerge themselves- and they all tend to be squeamish around large fish too). What kills us underwater isn't lack of your oxygen, but lack of magic; lakes and rainstorms and such highly distort the energy field all around us, as well as the lines we use to take it in, and unless the water has already become fairly saturated with a magical sort of purple dust, then too easily and too often, magical creatures drown. It happens, if every pore is submerged for a significant amount of time. Perhaps half an hour, sometimes more depending on the size." He snapped his fingers twice in front of my nose. "Sanderson, enough is enough. My patience is running thin. I need you to get a hold of yourself. You know my feelings about emotions."

I opened one eye and attempted to use my tongue, only to droop my wings and flop my head down again, because speaking wasn't a real option. My throat was too tight. My face was too hot. My eyes stung too much.

H.P. put a hand to one hip and looked me up and down. "I didn't exactly want to risk pushing you  _back_  into capture myopathy, but we can't stay here much longer. Someone else is bound to be curious. Eunice, drop your coat over him inside out. It's the pixie equivalent of taking a cat by the scruff, turning a leprechaun upside down, or knocking on wood within earshot of an Anti-Fairy, and will physically and mentally shut him down for a moment. Wrenching off anyone's hat would have the same effect, too, but, well, his appears to be stuck."

"Huh," Eunice said. I heard the rustle of fabric. "Don't let her smother me!" I choked out at last, but I was too late. She covered my legs with her coat at the same time H.P. lay his over my face, and I fell silent.

"Now for this fence. Do you keep wire cutters on hand somewhere?"

"There are some garden shears back at the golf cart shed."

"Mm… I suppose those will have to do. We can try the iron crocodile jaws if they don't come through for us. Go and fetch them, please."

Eunice's footsteps retreated. All was silent. A crunch of grass. I hissed in and out through my teeth. Flappy sobbed at the edge of my hearing.

"Sir?" I said, angling my head in that direction.

"Yes, I had forgotten he was there. I suppose I should grab-"

"Don't leave me again!"

"… Sanderson, the dumpster is hardly twenty feet away."

My fingers curled into one of the sleeves of his coat. I pressed it to my nose. It smelled warm, like ink, with the vaguest undertones of orange and cinnamon from the Colorado diner. The gray photograph of Flappy's parents was tucked in one of the pockets, too. "Don't leave."

I heard him sigh. His finger scratched me above the ear through the cloth. "Your magic lines are disconnecting and reconnecting. You're being ridiculous. This entire situation is ridiculous. I feel as though troubles such as this are quite common on our trips down to Earth, don't you? Wasn't it last time that you locked yourself in a refrigerator? That's right, and you banged around in there until shards of glass from every broken jar were wedged in your hands and the bubblegum-pink blood was pooling at your feet. How did we bandage that, do you remember? Tch… And yet, somehow I always find myself hauling you along when I leave Pixie World. I've come home to find the lower three floors of Headquarters torn apart by your nervous fingers too many times to justify going anywhere alone. I suppose I have myself to blame. I must have handled you too much as a child, Sanderson, and that's what brought on this desperate need for attention. But, well. You were the rough draft, and we all benefited from what I learned by experimenting with you."

"What… what was I like back when you first- you first started to… started to… How did you treat me as a- as a nymph? A-after I was weaned and we left Kalysta? After age two?"

"Hmm. You weren't much different from a gosling, really. You had to be everywhere with me - everywhere - or you would turn to crying and scratching at things as a safety behavior. Then you realized that when you damaged my possessions I would reappear to stop you, and my life was ruined from then on. I believed such actions were normal, especially as you weren't presented with your starpiece until so late, and thought the magic deprivation stunted your physical development. I was younger and less experienced back then, and I didn't realize normal fairy nymphs were meant to outgrow such need for attachment by the age of-"

"Here," Eunice burst out, gasping the words. "Sh- shears."

I began to squirm again, but H.P. took my hands and ran his thumbs in circles along my palms.  _Snip, snip_ , went the metal. Sharp pieces rained on the back of my neck.

"There we go. Take your time, Eunice. Easy… Easy. I'm here. That's the way we do it, Sanderson. You're functioning fine. Drink through those magic lines. Keep them steady. Keep them stable. It'll all be over soon. I'll be right here until it is. I'm not going anywhere."

Minutes dragged on, but I could feel it when my cap lifted into its usual position above my head. My shoulders felt twice as light. I bunched my muscles. The instant those coats were off me, I scrambled several paces across the grass until I reached the blacktop of the parking lot, hesitated, then sat down and flapped out my wings. H.P. followed me, softly clicking his tongue. He readjusted my shades.

"I apologize for ruining your fence," I mumbled, turning back around.

"Don't be." Eunice placed her hands on her waist and nodded once in a satisfied manner. "I think I'll keep the hole. All pixies should be welcome here, don't you agree?"

"You're a good damsel, Eunice Tuckfield. Sanderson- Oh, right, I suppose we really ought to- Sander-!"

My ears pricked at the next high warble in Flappy's voice. H.P. and I circled the dumpster on opposite sides and reached the child at almost the same moment. I scooped Flappy into my arms, realizing too late that I should have waited for H.P. to take the lead. Looking back on it, I still could have handed Flappy over, but instead my arms moved towards my own body rather than away. I didn't want any risk of him squirming off again. Then H.P. was there, wedging his fingers between Flappy and me. He must have pulled up too fast, because for a brief moment his wings enveloped all three of us in a tattered, translucent umbrella.

"It's ridiculous," he muttered twice in a row, keeping his wings where they were. "With pixie nymphs, you can predict where they'll hide- open spaces where their wings are free, heaps of paper to burrow in, anywhere there's a supply of sugar. And you can always cut your skin and they'll swarm to you for the pheromones. But human babies are entirely unpredictable and I don't like them at all."

Holding Flappy quickly wasn't enough for me, and I reached out for H.P. He lay a finger on one wrist and pushed it down.

"No hugs," he said in his firm way. "Remember the deal we made when you were five hundred?"

I withdrew my arms, my wings stinging from the twist I'd bartered not to take. "Sir, Flappy came out here- I think he came to the dumpster because he was hungry, boss."

"Possibly," H.P. said, disinterested. He moved back as Eunice came around the fence through the gate, sliding her arms through her jacket sleeves, and crouched down beside us.

"So this is the little guy who caused us so much trouble. What's your name, skipper?"

"Finley," I said, not wanting to explain 'Flappy Bob'. H.P. shot me a sour sideways glance.

"You have such gorgeous purple-blue eyes. I feel like I've seen them somewhere before, peeking out at me. You're pretty big for a baby pixie. Are they all as round as you…?"

"Put Finley in the truck and start it up for me, would you, Sanderson?" H.P. interrupted, pushing his arm between us. "It's been a long two days for both of you and I want you to lie down. You'll find the keys are already there."

"Yes, sir."

"And  _you_ ," Eunice said, leveling a finger at H.P.'s nose, "can stay right here for one more minute. You're still bleeding. I grabbed something for that while I was in the shed." She drew a thin strip of white from the pocket of her jacket and tore open the paper. It wasn't simply a bandage- it was a Band-Aid, pale green, dotted with Tasmanian Devils and Tweety Birds. It was Bell who had made Band-Aids his annual project in 1920, and he might have won first prize for Best Inspiration Given if he hadn't been running up against Madigan and some sort of voting rights law thing. H.P. rolled his eyes to the sky and let them stay there as Eunice patted it and one more across his cheek and a third along his neck.

"Thank you," he said when she had finished. "Eunice Tuckfield, you truly are a good damsel. If you worked for me, I'd give you a promotion and double your break period."

She smiled. "Well, I might wish I- Er… I might have liked to be born a pixie too. Thank you for your kind words. You're welcome here any time. It's your golf course, after all, perhaps more than it is ours."

"It is, actually. Many of those decorations I sculpted myself from wood before recreating them with iron. Most ponds I dug by hand. A friend I once had planted an ancestor of that maple tree near your Snack Shack. Eventually I sold the thing to one of the owners who came before you; it was too small a place to do anything practical with, and too near will o' the wisp country for me to feel comfortable staying for terribly long on my own, no matter how cheap it made the mortgage…"

As she got to her feet, she said, "Well, I'll take good care of it for you, and as long as I'm living, I'll ensure that Quincy follows suit."

"See that you do. And Eunice?"

She turned. H.P. placed one fist to his waist and smiled a grim smile.

"Lose the windmills."

She blinked, but nodded. The two waved farewell, and H.P. glanced back at me. "Didn't I tell you to put Flappy in the truck?"

"What? Oh. Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

He rubbed the pink Yosemite Sam Band-Aid along his neck. "I'll be with you in one more moment. There's something I'd like to check on first."

I considered asking, then didn't. H.P. disappeared back over the fence, sticking near a tree some ways down for cover. As he had requested, I lay Flappy down on the soft seat, where he instantly fell asleep, and then rolled down the passenger-side window and rested my chin and fingertips on the slit where the glass had withdrawn.

"We're all set to leave, H.P.," I called through the fence after a couple minutes had gone by. Perhaps he hadn't heard me above the babble of the humans. Rubbing Flappy's hair, I used my foot to turn up the radio.

Several more minutes passed in this way. It was seven songs' worth.

"H.P.!" I shouted again. When he still didn't answer, I checked the parking lot for humans, slid down from the truck, went over to the gate, and took hold of the links in the fence. H.P. floated near a bush on the other side, gazing across the course as cheerful, gabbling families of three or four children each all clustered around the holes with chunky clubs and colorful balls in hand.  _Thwack!_ s rang out from every direction.

I cleared my throat. "H.P.?"

"The perfect place for a lone pixie to make his own," he murmured without turning around. "It was the first thing I put together when I came back from Great Sidhe after that series of silly contests with Pip, five hundred years before you were born. From the outside, anyone would think it some eccentric's private collection of decorative animals. I reclaimed the land after we left the cherubs, and finally opened it to human business when the time was right, if you recall. Then of course later on I sold the place, but I don't think I've ever said why I went with the African Safari theme. It's simple, really." His voice tilted very, very slightly upward, like he was considering a smile. "If anyone who didn't own it, didn't pay their entrance fee, or didn't share my genetics should enter in, all the animals are programmed to swarm."

I flashed back to Flappy's cornfield. "Swarm? Like… like pixies, how when one of us gets hurt, it automatically triggers our 'Everyone nearby, please rush to my aid' pheromones? Sir?"

"Much like it. They're iron-cast - I didn't want to waste unnecessary magic on bringing them completely to life - but their main intent was to be a noisy distraction so someone who was caught or possibly asleep might have the chance to slip away. It's pleasant fortune I added the rule centuries later that children five and under might enter free, or we may have had a tiny problem to deal with once Flappy crossed the premises. Of course I could manage to come up with a better system now, but that was long ago."

Then, shrugging harder than anyone should ever really have the need to shrug, he faced me and nodded. A moment later, he had come over the fence and down beside me again. "I presume Flappy's in the car now."

"Yes, sir."

"Then we're off. You'll drive, I trust."

I nodded. He settled himself in the passenger seat, holding the brick that would go carefully on the gas pedal, and scanned the course with his eyes one final time.

"I did like Eunice. Perhaps when I next pop in to Fairy World, I'll see if I can't get her on the list of former godchildren deserving of having their memories returned. She's the type who could keep a secret, and she might prove to be a good ally someday." He looked down at Flappy. "If we could raise you to be like her, that would help us tremendously, I think."

After I had nosed my way out of the parking lot and turned back onto the wide dirt road, we hit a bump and Flappy woke up, slamming his brow against H.P.'s knee. His whimpers spun away into a whine.

"Why do babies cry so much?" I grumbled. "Did I ever cry that much as a nymph?"

"Pixies bite to defend themselves, but crying is the defensive behavior among humans, even down to their babies. It's meant to be a signal to their fellows that something has hurt them and they could use assistance. That's why, even in the early stages of the expression, their faces turn puffy and red and their throats close over, forcing them to make loud choking sounds as they try to speak. Again, it's very similar to our swarming instinct once any trace of pixie blood is in the air, simply by sound as opposed to scent. Humans have a poor sense of smell, but they're better with their eyes and ears."

"Oh."

We drove on for another three minutes, listening to The Righteous Brothers sing "Just Once In My Life", and then H.P. looked at me sideways. "Did you thank Eunice for searching the course with you?"

I thought about it. If I said I hadn't, then H.P. would give me the lecture about how we always wanted to leave those with whom we interacted with a good impression. As he did so, he'd probably tell me to turn the truck around. I'd have to look Eunice in the eyes and listen to a reply spring from the same mouth that had laughed at me when I'd been stuck. At minimum, it would take another half an hour before we reached Jetmore.

"Yes," I said, and stood taller on the seat.


	5. Whimsifinado v. Eros Nest

_**Whimsifinado v. Eros Nest:** Concerning the arrest of Fergus Whimsifinado for allegedly reproducing without copulation, the Fairy Council ruled that the Eros bloodline are permitted under Aphrodite Protocol to retain in their facility he and whomever else they deem necessary for the sake of fulfilling their holy duties as outlined by the Tuatha Dé Danann in the times of the Great Dawn, may the Lost Ancients return from their underground prison. Fergus Whimsifinado, Anti-Fergus Anti-Whimsifinado, Sanderson Chipixie, Anti-Sanderson Anti-Whimsifinado, Madigan Chipixie, and the soon-to-be Anti-Madigan will remain under Eros watch as they are. The use of a yoo-doo doll to restrain them does not qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. All offspring of Fergus Whimsifinado who are not summoned by the Eroses are to be compensated for the doll's influence over them on a day-to-day basis. Ambrosine Whimsifinado shall act as legal guardian over them in his son's stead until they attain age of majority, and he will be reinstated as owner and curator of Wish Fixers._

* * *

So, um… I'm not allowed to sing in the car anymore. After too many instances where I became so engrossed in singing along that I drifted off the dusty road into the fields or nearly plowed into some fence that shielded us from the cows, H.P. got frustrated with wrenching the wheel straight again. He licked his palm, wrestled my cowlick into submission, and then killed the radio with his shoe right in the middle of The Turtles' "It Ain't Me, Babe". We drove in silence after that, and I kept the beaten brown pick-up on a straight course.

It was perhaps an hour and a half before we passed into Jetmore. "Filling station," H.P. said, nodding to it with his head since his thumb was in Flappy Bob's mouth. "We're bound to be running low on gas by now." After setting the little human on the seat beside me, he ducked down to remove the brick from the gas pedal again. I eased into the station and turned off the truck.

"Thirty cents a gallon. It's going up."

"It's the war," was his reply. He tossed me Flappy's red and yellow blanket, and I lay it across my lap as he squirmed into hiding and the attendant came scampering up. "Two dollar's worth," I said, passing the bills through the window, and he fortunately went away without taking too close of a look at me. I did my utmost to appear large and keep my wings hidden as a second attendant rinsed off the front windshield; at least there was enough magic dust lingering on my skin to keep me from appearing terribly out of place to the average human eye.

When we were good to go, then at H.P.'s urging I turned the car to a deserted path marred with ATV treads through mud, and we drove on. It was still a two-hour drive to Mushroom Rock, at bare minimum, and Flappy especially was getting fussy again. But we couldn't stop. We had no way to disguise ourselves from more attentive human eyes, so stacking H.P. on my head to appear taller beneath a trench coat was out of the question. We'd just go without. It was only two more hours.

We passed a farmhouse on our right side, and H.P. and I saw  _it_  sitting on a post of the wooden fence at the same time. Both of us flicked up our wings, and I dove for the brick on the gas pedal and slammed it on the brake as H.P. kept the wheel steady. We screeched to a halt just before it was too late. I returned to my seat. There we were, staring it down.

It didn't leave.

A horse in the neighboring corral crunched on a piece of apple a young human drake and damsel near the fence had given it. A rabbit crossed the road with the same steady hop Wilcox always did. We entertained Flappy by dangling the keys in front of his face, and finally he wrenched them from my fingers and began to scrape the metal against his one big tooth. After perhaps five minutes of waiting, H.P. rubbed the light indents on the sides of his nose where his glasses rested.

"As long as we're stuck here, I'm going to take the chance to talk to nature. Keep an eye on Flappy."

"I need to go too, sir." I crawled across the seat to the passenger side and jumped out after him. The horse whinnied, and one of the humans began speaking to soothe it. H.P. gave me a reluctant hand wave to signal that I was allowed to come, and we studied the terror on its fence post from this new angle.

"Turn your back to it, Sanderson. It can't hurt us if we're facing the opposite direction. Just float away."

Pixies are planners by nature, but we hadn't planned for our tormentor to shift from the fence post to the hood of the car by the time we came back. We paced through ATV scours for a good ten minutes, listening to the cows and such on the farm (along with Flappy, who had begun to cry and shake the keys), only glancing towards the pick-up when we dared and mostly keeping our eyes on our feet and our backs to the horse's corral. "How are we going to get in now, sir?" I asked.

"We'll wait. We don't have much choice- we can't fly high enough to keep above the cloudlevel, even if your wing wasn't injured, and flying too low means the humans could catch sight of us and potentially shoot at us again. But we shouldn't be here much longer. It can't stay on there forever."

"Sir-"

"I suppose I  _could_  fly if we stuck to covered and deserted areas, but with your wing, the trip will be long and painful-"

"Sir-"

"What?"

"Sir, it stopped grooming and it's- it's coming this way."

He risked a glance back that he probably shouldn't have, and grabbed the arm of his glasses. "Oh, smoof!  _Split_!"

H.P. took to his wings and perched on the mailbox. I ducked beneath the fence and into the horse corral, but our pursuer simply redirected its course to follow me. Keeping my back to it and my head low to watch for any horse leavings, I stumbled along the fenceline until I was approaching the barn. H.P. was forced to stay along the fence with me, occasionally mutter-calling down that it was still interested in tailing us. Herding us.

Too soon, I found myself forced to stop. If I went much further, I was in danger of being stomped by the hooves of the great brown horse. Disgraced descendants of unicorns or not, there wasn't magic in their life force and a single solid blow to the brain could potentially do me in.

"Up, Sanderson," H.P. said. I placed my foot on the first rung of the fence and grabbed his offered hand. What H.P. had not counted on was my weight and angle being enough to pull him down on top of me. I pressed myself into his shoulder, shielding the rest of my face with my arms and injured wing.

Here it came. All twenty-five bristling, boiling black ounces of it.

"Mew?" The kitten bounced off my knee and crawled across H.P.'s shoulder before butting its head against his throat. I could taste the magical energy field chill around us as it officially crossed our path. We looked up together as a thin spiral of blue-black  _foop_ ed into existence over our heads. Even the horse knew enough to shift away.

"Please be Anti-Robin, please be Anti-Robin, please be Anti-Robin," H.P. muttered half under his breath, as he always did, but his wings drooped when he saw who it was. My mouth ran dry. Taking the kitten by the scruff of its neck, I climbed back to my feet.

"Erm… Anti-Naelita. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be on Anti-Pixie Isle? Which is supposed to be sealed up? Behind a giant pink gate? Rather magically? In Anti-Fairy World? Locking it was expensive."

"Anti-Schnozmo lets me in and out when I ask him nicely," she said, shrugging her wings. "Technically, the seal doesn't work on us  _normal_  Anti-Fairies any more than on you all."

H.P. sat back on his heels, shaking his head. "As long as you're not the Anti-Kalysta, I don't care. Let's get this bad luck business over and done with. We're very busy."

"I'm an artist," she insisted. She tossed her shiny black wand in the air, snapped her fingers, and then swiped it across her body with a flick as it came down again. One  _foop_  later, a second, yellower horse materialized in the air above H.P.'s head. He had time to lift a wing and an arm before its rear slammed him into the ground. I held my tongue and prevented myself from twitching more than one finger. The confused horse had been formed of magic; he'd be all right, once he clawed his way out from under it.

"Let's see… And what can I do for you, stranger?" Anti-Naelita leaned one hand against the horse's metatarsal, tapping her starpiece against her cheek. Her eyes wandered from my face to my shoes and then up again. "What about some heebie-jeebies? They say Anti-Fairy kisses really make Seelie Court skin crawl. Sparkling acid adds an extra zip."

I could have nudged her away, but that would have implied I cared. Instead, I neither moved nor blinked as she walked her fingers up my arm. "I don't smooch anti-selkies. We can't reproduce. There's no point. I have better ways to spend my time."

She flipped her braid behind her leathery wings with a snort. "Anti-Sanderson lets me entertain him when my man sugars himself out cold, and I don't even care if he's awkward and sloppy, because he's the Head Anti-Pixie and not just anybody gets to wear a polygraph and boast they got their neck nibbled on by a vampire king last Friday (Most of 'em think I mean Anti-Cosmo and I don't correct them if I don't have to). That all-sugar diet may go straight to his chubby stomach, but have you seen that rippling way he slides and twirls across the dance floor? He's no novice in swaying those gentle hips- I'll tell you that much.  _No_ , sir." She snapped her fingers. "Right. You're mirror counterparts. With him being everything you aren't, I bet you can guess how it all goes down, mostly. Do I even want to know how you treat your damsels if he kisses the backs of our wrists and calls us his 'treasured Opalfruits' and his 'favorite lollipops'?"

The dancing was an old sore spot I'd thought I'd grown out of, and evidently hadn't. I could hit notes up and down my end of the chromatic scale and hadn't forgotten a lyric in my life, and he never once missed a step in the foxtrot or the cha-cha or the tango, even tingle-fritzy and sugar-drunk. My lip twitched, but I kept silent and focused on the spider-crawling fingers that had wriggled out from beneath the stunned horse. Anti-Naelita made an attempt to tug my tie from beneath my buttoned suit coat. She underestimated its ability to stay where I wanted it. A crease edged across her forehead, then smoothed out.

"Sometimes things even get a little more interesting- he might let me lock lips with him  _twice_  in the same week. Why do you pixie-types always have to take off your sunglasses and kiss with your eyes open? It's freakin' creepy, dude."

"Well, Sanderson Prime has only kissed one damsel in his life, it wasn't worth it, and he's not interested in any other takers." I handed her the squirming black kitten. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have business to do and you're keeping me from it."

I kicked myself once I said it. Why didn't I distract her with a kiss to steal her wand, duh? Anti-Fairy magic was powered by disbelief in magical beings and was arguably more powerful than ours anyway.

Too late, even as I took her elbow and attempted to backpedal. She caught on, stuffed her hand behind her back, raised the other finger to my lips to hush my babble, and drew away. Still pouting, she flapped off over the fence. "You pixies are always so anti-fun."

I watched her disappear beyond a haystack, spinning her starpiece and cuddling the little cat against her neck. Then I walked over to the still-sitting yellow horse, lay my hands against its haunches, and shoved with all I had. "She forgot to hex me, sir. She just completely forgot."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the sack came down over my head. All the world plunged into burlap darkness. I didn't yelp, though I will admit to my slight flinch. I pressed my fingertips to the crosshatch of squares along the rough fabric. It smelled of smoof, though I wasn't sure if that was the material itself or something it had been lying beside.

"H.P.?"

"Got one," chortled the voice, sounding like a young drake, perhaps around Quincy's age but tilted vaguely younger, like he hadn't quite grown into his adult wings. "Is the big one still here, Tam? Where'd he go? Over there, above the barn? Maybe that's a crow. He's- You think they're Ronald's fairies?"

The damsel - Tam, I suppose - pinched her voice into a falsetto. "They're stuffed animals, Thomas! They're my action figures! My grandma made them for me before she died! I don't know what that star-wand thing you're holding is. Never seen it before in my life. I don't have fairies- you're crazy!"

I curled my hands to fists the way Anti-Sanderson had shown me and beat them against the sack one after the other. "Sir? Advice?"

"They talk," Tam remarked, all cheerful and surprised. I withdrew my hands for a moment to rub the goosebumps along my shoulders, then tried again on the opposite side of the bag.

"H.P.?  _H.P._?"

Wasn't working- he couldn't hear me- wasn't loud enough-

I slid backwards as Thomas flipped the sack sideways, but before I could right myself and dive out, his hands grasped the edges and drew it shut. I went up into the air as he lifted it, my limbs tumbling together.

"Why can't you do it here?" Tam asked as Thomas began to walk away from the farmhouse and back the way we'd come, gently swinging the bag - and me - against his wingless shoulder.

"I have to be there to make sure it works. And I haven't decided what the third one's going to be. I might need time to think. I'll come back and help you look for the other one when I'm sure he's not going to get away. You're still coming over after dinner, right?"

Taking the scratchy fabric between my fingers, I sunk my teeth into it and tore. This produced a small hole, but just as I was reaching my hand through it (Not smoof), I realized that despite my small size, Thomas would almost certainly notice when my weight disappeared. He'd turn around and simply pick me up, or Tam would see. With my injured wing, it wasn't as though I could fly away before he got his hands around my middle. H.P. couldn't carry both me and Flappy. Human legs were longer than mine, and I still wasn't used to my grounded state- he'd catch me on foot with ease if I attempted to run. Supposing that there were tractors I could hide under or animals to duck behind, he wouldn't give up his search and it wasn't dark enough yet to remain concealed for long. No, I'd be better off making an escape attempt while he was asleep, or if I heard H.P. out there distracting him.

New plan. New… plan…

I bit into the soft flesh of my left arm, near the shoulder. Pixie teeth were the sharpest of all the Seelie Court, and after a few agonizing seconds of nipping, I broke skin and began to leak pink. This, I held against the hole in the bag. At least H.P. could follow the scent of my pheromones for a while should he end up losing the visual trail. Which, if he were still caught beneath that horse, was probable.

We walked in bumpy silence for eight minutes, past a mailbox that read 'Bacon', until Thomas stepped upwards twice and paused. I heard a jingle of a key slipping into a lock, and a pierce-pointed wave jolted through me again. I'd been half-expecting to be thrown in the river or used as an archery target. Both were outdoor activities. H.P. wasn't likely to get me out of a house- not without straining himself. I clawed and bit at the bag again, but by the time the hole was large enough to stick two hands through together, it was too late. The door fell shut behind us.

"Where's your mother?" came an instant, drakian voice. Thomas froze.

"She's not here?"

"She went out looking for you about an hour ago. What's in the sack- Manure?"

"Just some of Tammy's old clothes. I brought them for Janice, if they fit. I'm gonna go see if she's in the backyard." He slammed the door without waiting for an answer and hopped back down the stairs. The sidewalk blurred to yellowing grass beyond my hole. I managed to stick my arm through up to the shoulder, but nothing else would fit. I ripped at the bag again. By then, Thomas had passed through the gate and into the backyard, bounced down another set of steps, and squeezed through the basement door. Sunlight faded into concrete and stud beams. After the quicks of my fingernails bumped against one more folding chair, I surrendered myself to lying in the burlap sack in quiet.

In a chilly, wall-less room that was almost certainly his, Thomas dumped me in a glass tank on his desk that had possibly held fish once, or perhaps a lizard. Before I could stand up, he slotted the lid into place and then put a green Spanish textbook on top of it. After that, he leaned back against an airplane-and-tractor-sheeted bed, and I could see his haystack hair for the first time since he and Tam had fed apples to the horse. "Okay, fairy. I caught you, so I want three wishes in return for letting you go."

Did I look like a genie to him? I chewed over my possible responses as I studied the skeletal framework of the 'walls', then settled on, "That's right. But I have to be in direct sunlight or moonlight in order to do it. In a fairy circle, mushrooms and stuff."

"Nuh-uh. Ronald makes wishes inside. I've heard him in the bathroom at school."

I pursed my lips. There wasn't enough room to stand up in the tank, so I sat cross-legged with my hands rubbing one of my shoes. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you. You see, I can't do magic without a wand, and the Tooth Fairy stole mine yesterday."

Frowning, Thomas ducked beneath his bed and rustled papers and things around. After a moment (which I spent trying and failing to lift the textbook from the lid of the tank), he pulled out a shoebox and took out a black stick topped with a yellow star. "Will this one work?"

"It looks like the real deal, yes."

He pried open the lid of the tank without really removing the textbook and slid in the wand. When I took it, he stood back. "All right. So I just say, 'I wish', then you wave the wand and grant it?"

"That's how it's usually done."

"Okay. First, I wish my real dad would come back from Italy, kick my step-dad out of the house, and we could be a happy family again."

I waved the wand, but it wilted with an unflattering sound, as did my hopes. The power light didn't come on when I ran my thumb up and down the handle. I unscrewed the star capsule at the top. It was empty of rosewater. I took off my shades to rub the place between my eyes. So close. Yet, much too far. Should've kissed the anti-selkie.

"Did it work?" Thomas asked, tilting his head. "I was expecting more pizazz. Sparkles or something. At least a flash of light."

For a second, I debated. I could tell him yes, but if he wished for something more obvious, like a puppy to be in his arms right now, he'd know I lied. I could get punished for that. He might twist my wings. Perhaps he'd take a gun and shoot at me like that brat back in Flappy's cornfield. He'd already told Tam he wanted to wait and assure himself that his early wishes had been granted before he made the third.

My shades went back on my nose. "The star canister here isn't broken, but its insides are drained dry. You need a special kind of water to be able to tune in to the proper frequency of the magical energy field that surrounds the world- a different frequency than the one our physical bodies are connected to so we don't all asphyxiate ten minutes after birth. You can only get purified rosewater from the great fountain Kiiloëi, and that's  _literally_ on the opposite edge of the universe as far away from here as possible. It was almost certainly done on purpose; whoever gave you this was throwing you a decoy. I can't do any magic with it."

"Oh… So, if I got you a wand that worked, then you could grant wishes?"

Seeing even fewer reasons to lie now, I shook my head and gave him back the wand when he reached in his hand. "The first problem with your view of reality is, I'm not actually a  _fairy_. I'm a pixie. We're not permitted to grant wishes anyway, for the purposes of this discussion. The Fairy Council likes to keep tabs on whose souls are being drained, and they know that's impossible when they don't have jurisdiction over us anymore. And if you want to get really technical, I'm only half-fairy, and a late bloomer at that, and not terribly good at channeling magic to begin with. You would have been better off capturing the Head Pixie."

His blue eyes narrowed to slits. "So what you're saying is, you weren't even trying to grant my dad wish, you were just trying to escape or attack me or something."

"Duh. Catching me doesn't mean I'm bound to you. I'm not a genie."

Thomas flopped backwards on his bed and huffed at the air. I put my palms and nose to the glass until he sat up again and pointed his finger at me. "Stay."

"I can't go anywhere anyway."

He added a second textbook on top of the tank lid before he left. I hadn't been expecting that. Regardless, I did my best to stand and shove, wings beating, until I heard his shoes clopping back over the thin cement of the basement floor. Then I sat down. Thomas returned with Tam in tow, passing between rows of studs rather than the door since his skeletal room had no walls anyway. There was no sign of H.P.

"Do you eat human food?" he asked, crouching closer to my eye level. When I nodded after a short pause, he handed the textbooks to Tam and cracked the lid wide enough to slip in an orange juice box, a metal spoon, a cup of strawberry yogurt, and a bag of Fritos, already popped open. I watched as he put the books back on. Then I lay down and curled up in the far corner of the tank. How was it that only yesterday, I'd been slinging two wands full of magic the way Anti-Fergus had taught me back at the Eros Nest as I guarded H.P.'s back from Cupid's arrows?

To go from that to the following day, being stuffed in a clear box like a mime, within a human dwelling, with H.P. trapped outside simply because without a starpiece he couldn't  _ping_  past the locks, let alone sneak past the drake in the kitchen- it sent a shudder between my wings. He'd need to get back to Pixie World. Retrieve another pen. Then have to register it as his main one so that the other pixies could track it and him as he headed back. He might have forgotten which house belonged to Thomas, and so…

… What if he… didn't…?

E-even if he'd tracked my pheromones, or studied the house, he might choose not to… to…

_The Pixie race must survive before any individual._

I smooshed my cheek to the floor of the glass tank and drew my wings up to shield my face from the two humans. I didn't want them to see my uncovered eyes when I could feel them burning against the grooves of my palms. H.P. would come back, I reminded myself, giving my brain a mental slap. He'd come back for me at the cornfield. He'd come back for me at Eunice's fence. He would come back. He always came back. Always, always, always. No matter what he said, he wasn't just my boss, but he was my father, and he cared about me. He  _had_  to care about me.

My mind trailed back to that first day as prisoner of the cherubs, when after three thousand years of dwelling on it, I'd all of a sudden looked down and found myself spilling to him exactly how I felt about our relationship, how I would trade every fiber of myself to save his soul, how I appreciated the way he always had the answers, how all the right songs swirled in my ears whenever I saw his face in the mornings, how I could taste the music in his breath against my ear when he leaned down to examine whatever I was working on, how I idolized the way he moved his hands back and forth over breakfast because he was always still filling papers or writing letters or proofreading contracts while he ate, how he felt to me what the fagigglyne addiction must feel like to Wilcox, how he never let anyone crush him beneath their heel like a doormat- how I just wanted to  _be_  him  _so badly_ , more than anybody else in the entire universe must have wanted anything since the imprisonment of the Tuatha Dé Danann, may the Lost Ancients return from their underground prison, because he always had the answers and was kind and fair to all five hundred and five - three - of us, and he was just my absolute unflinching and unflawed hero and I just envisioned him to one day  _need_  me like I needed him, to look at me and  _want_  me, want every part of me- to  _appreciate_  the tireless way I worked- to just  _tell me I was his son_ , and that he'd chosen freely to give me his  _love_  even though I didn't nearly deserve it, and I daydreamed that someday his hands might drive me quietly wild with the slow way he'd slide them behind my back to touch me beneath my wings, and his fingers would trace along the back of my neck and press me against his stomach and I'd melt into the warmth of his shirt and he'd whisper my name and just… keep me there, restrained prisoner, with his genuine, fatherly hug…

The crushing dull violet stare. Squeezing my bones to powder. The way he'd turned his back and sentenced me to my bed when my confession had stumbled to an end. Like my deepest needs meant no more than my clumsy poetry. Th-the moment he'd left me for dead in the snow the day I broke out of pooferty had ever been seared into my mind, my single memory from my first century of life, just him walking and walking until he allowed himself to be swallowed up and didn't even look back to check if I was still there- The day I'd humiliated myself only hours before he named Longwood as company vice president instead of me- That time during the War of the Angels when he'd shot me in the leg, not because anyone was forcing him to, but to p-protect himself, and in the box I wrapped my arms around my head and I shivered and choked in silence, because pixies never cried, of course, so that was all I could do, you know? That's what it was, when I wouldn't sob - couldn't sob - We don't do that, you know- pixies. It's unbecoming- just not what we do in this business, you have to realize, it's just not, so I wasn't really crying, see, because pixies don't. Pixies can do a lot of things if they put their mind to it, but there are two actions that they are incapable of expressing at all. We do not cry. And we do not love. That's what H.P. says and the way the universe goes.

"Are those okay?" Thomas asked, still hovering near. He meant the yogurt and chips and juice.

"Not… not hungry."

"What happened to your wing? With the hole?"

"A young human shot me and I can't fly anymore."

Brief hesitation. Tam tapped her nails up and down the glass. "If we find you a wand that works, can you take us to the fairy land?"

At first, I chose not to respond. Then I removed my hands from my face and said, "I don't live in Fairy World anymore. These days I live in Pixie World. I only go to Fairy World when my boss assigns me to. Or I  _did_ , anyway."

"Who's your boss? Oh- that'd be the Head Pixie, right?"

I nodded without uncurling. My own reflection appeared as a faint image in the glass. As I shuffled my wings back into place, I said, "I'd… I'd worry more about yourselves than me, in your place. He's going to come back for me soon, you know, and if he finds you standing here like this, he'll- he'll bite out your eyeballs, stick them under your tongues, and then kill you both by slicing you from your belly buttons up to your chins in a single swipe like he were severing one of his magic lines for a nymph."

I felt rather than saw or heard their alarmed glances. Evidently, this was not a thought that had crossed their minds. One of them gulped audibly. Then, Tam's voice: "Er… What's your name, pixie?"

"I'm Mister Sanderson," I said, at last rolling back to my other side. What was the point in pretending they weren't there? They were, and as long as they were, H.P. wasn't going to come for me.

"What's your first name?"

"I don't have one. Just… just Mister."

Thomas snorted. "Your mom and dad didn't even give you a real name?"

"The Head Pixie named me, actually." Pressing my fingertips to the glass again, I knelt up. "I'm Sanderson. His eldest son and the prince of my kind. A-and let me tell you, you totally messed with the wrong. Smoofing. Pixie today, because he's going to come back furious."

They both backed away against Thomas's bed. Swallowing again, Tam said, "You don't look much like royalty, Mister Sanderson. You don't even have a scepter, or a cape, or a sword, or a-"

I yanked off my gray cap with the largest flourish I could muster to display my floating little fairy crown with its three broken points, and the other two clinging on by half-shattered threads. Each of them said a different human word that I didn't recognize, but with context that I could guess. "Thomas," Tam continued in the same breath, "you've just killed us both."

"Hey, you're the one who made  _me_  dive for him first!"

"You're a very lucky fellow, Thomas," I said, sliding my shades another inch down my nose. They shook in my hand, for some reason- must have been an earthquake. "If that wand had worked, I'd… I'd have torn you off the face of the planet. I could do it. I would have. And no one ever would have known why."

One of his hands went on his waist. The fingers curled into the folds of his red and white shirt. "You're the prince. Your dad is king. If I set you free, can you send me a real fairy who'll grant my wishes?"

"Yes! Anything you want!  _Just take me back to H.P._!"

"So that's an official deal?"

It couldn't be. Business instinct prevented me from stating it was. I hesitated for too long with my lips parted. Thomas picked up a third textbook, with an orange spine. "You're no Pixie prince," he said, and put it on top of my tank with the first two. "Don't jump to conclusions, Thomas Bacon," I shouted back, splaying my fingers, "I  _can_  help you!" But it was for naught. Though there was an instant of uncertainty hovering in his blue eyes as I named him in full, he brushed it off as he and Tam each took a corner of green and black moose-and-cabin quilt and lay it over my tank too.

"Isn't your step-dad going to find him?" Tam asked. "He'll cut off his wings and slice him up in his own blood for soup, and then kill him."

"Jake never comes down here," was Thomas's reply, and they left again through the doorless doorway.


	6. Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle

_**Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle:** Neither the Keeper of the Delegating Administrative Rules of the Known Universe nor any Angel Guardian (as determined by the annual renewal of the truce following the War of the Angels) holds any jurisdiction over instances of non-Guardian members of either the Seelie or Unseelie Courts interacting among the Angels on Earth and, on Earth, may neither forbid nor interfere with such interactions on the grounds that non-Guardians are by default considered neutral parties until any deliberate antagonistic intent can be proven (to be determined by the Head Keeper of the Rules and with the approval of the Fairy Council or Anti-Fairy Council, respectively, as relates to the year's Guardians)._

* * *

My sweat-splashed palms squeaked across glass. I looked about the bare lizard tank for something I could use to force up the lid, textbooks on top of it or not, but I had only my hands, and regardless of whether pushing pens for two hundred and fifty thousand years had blessed me with decent finger muscles, they were too weak to shove the books off. My shoulders and legs fared no better. Even when I threw myself against the side so it wobbled.

I didn't try very hard to knock the tank from the table. Every time I heard Thomas's voice through the ceiling, he was begging to be excused from this or that chore and return downstairs. If I could pick up on that, he almost certainly could pick up on the sound of glass shattering on the unfinished basement floor. He might move me to something that would be even more difficult to escape. Boxers made of smoof, maybe. No, no. I needed to wait for him to leave the house. But he didn't go.

After three or possibly four hours of my aimless pressing and slapping, staring at the green moose quilt around me and listening to feet cross the floor over my head, someone returned to the bedroom. They sounded like they passed between the studs in the open wall. Neither of us spoke. I flattened myself to the base of the tank, assuming it was Thomas but unwilling to risk drawing Jake's attention, should it chance to be him.

"Do you want me to bring you a toothbrush, Sanderson?"

Thomas's voice. I closed my eyes without replying. After several seconds had flickered by, he lifted the edge of the quilt and tapped against the glass.

 _I am dead, I am dead, I am dead,_  I thought. Humans left solid bodies when they shed their mortal skins, and if this one couldn't tell a pixie from a fairy or a genie, perhaps he didn't know that magical beings turned to dust when their lines withered away.

"Sorry," he mumbled, drawing back again. "I'll let you sleep."

I cracked my right eyelid as the blanket fluttered back down. "The Head Pixie will come for me, and he'll wreak his vengeance upon you and everyone else in this household."

"If he had magic, he would have killed me when I trapped you in that sack. And if he comes back and does, then I don't care. Being dead can't be  _that_ bad, especially if I bring Jake down with me."

As Thomas rustled about the room, perhaps changing from his clothes into his pajamas, his toes slapping and scraping over concrete, I had to dwell on that. Then, after what I guessed was about six minutes of him lying in his bed after having clicked off his lamp, I began to pound my fists. Thomas managed to ignore me for a second six minutes, and then he finally growled, "Would you knock that off?"

"No," I said, "you don't get to sleep. Not as long as I'm locked up."

"Well, I'm not letting you out until I talk to Ronald. Tomorrow is Saturday, so we have soccer together."

"If you make him reveal he has fairies, they're forcibly ripped away from him and he gets all his magical memories shifted or altogether wiped, though the Fairy Council has the decency to let godchildren keep most all of the non-physical things they wished for, and occasionally the physical ones too. If Jorgen von Strangle catches you on the scene, he'll take your memory along with it while he's passing through the neighborhood. You might not remember that I'm here under this blanket, and I'll be trapped here for the remainder of my life. Since I'm immortal, that's forever."

For a few seconds Thomas considered this, and then said, "Well, I'm still going to talk to him first. Good night."

I had no plans for it to be a good night. Taking up the yogurt spoon he'd given me, I began to beat it against the glass.  _Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!_

Thomas threw back his sheets. "Shh! Jake's not a very heavy sleeper. Are you trying to get us both castrated?"

_Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!_

The quilt flipped away. I stopped playing the  _clang_ er as Thomas pushed aside the textbooks and shoved the lid of the tank open. Before I could spring upwards, he smacked me across my face with a soft, stuffed tiger. While I was thus out of commission, he plucked the spoon from my hand and slammed the lid back down. Rolling onto my stomach, I crawled over to the bag of Fritos and began crunching the chips with sharp pixie teeth. Thomas put a stop to that real quick, too.

"Maybe I'm nocturnal," I said when he asked.

"You were running around Tam's farm in broad daylight."

"I said 'maybe'." I picked up my orange juice box and unwrapped the straw. He grumbled, "Slurp as loud as you want, Sanderson," and I heard him tucking an 8-track tape into place in his player. Click. Whirr. Whirr. Click click.

The instant the first bar hit my ears, the straw fell from my mouth.

" _Don't want a four-leaf clover. Don't want an old horse shoe. Want your kiss, 'cuz I just can't miss, with a good luck charm like you._ "

Sliding my straw back into place, I joined in the song. Since Thomas was murmur-singing too, it took him a moment to realize I had. He clicked the volume down at  _Rabbit's foot on a string_. "You know Elvis Presley?"

"Know him? I'm a pixie! I  _inspired_  him! Hawkins, Wilcox, Caudwell, Bayard and I all combined forces to help him get started for our annual project back in the '50s. It paid off big time.  _Your love is worth all the gold on Earth; no wonder that I say-_ "

Thomas stopped the tape and replaced it with a new one. "What about this baby?"

I pricked up my ears, then nodded once. " _Can't buy me looove! Looove! Can't buy me looove… I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend, if it makes you feel all right._ "

" _I'll get you anything, my friend, if it makes you feel all right._ "

" _For I don't care too- much for money, 'cuz money can't buy me love_. Paul McCartney put that together just a year or two ago. I was at the hotel in Paris. I watched them move the piano up to their room before he wrote it. You may notice that it has no background vocals. That was my idea. Trust me, I spared us all. Come on, give me a hard one."

My quilt was still over the tank, so I couldn't see what took Thomas so long, but eventually he began to move again. "All right, let me see what my options are. Hmm. Well. Okay. If you're so clever, try this."

I picked up the song at once, and trilled along with it until Thomas joined in with me about midway through: " _I might miss her lips and the smile on her face, the touch of her hair and this girl's warm embrace, so if you don't wanna cry like I do, I'd keep away from Runaround Sue. Whoooah, ohhh…_ DiMucci always was good at those."

"Did you meet him too?"

"Possibly. I meet a lot of people in the music business. Why all the focus on damsels, though- I never understood that." I picked up the stuffed tiger and held it in my lap, singing along until the tape ground itself to a halt after about forty-five minutes. Thomas didn't change it out, so I knocked on the side of the tank with my knuckles and the stuffed tiger's hard eyes to get his attention. He stirred once, but that was it.

Once I realized that he'd fallen asleep, I broke off my noise. Was this my chance? Setting the tiger aside, I again made the attempt to lift the black, wire-mesh lid of the tank. There wasn't really enough room to jump. Doing so only bruised my head. My thoughts were that if I could knock the quilt to the floor, the textbooks would land on it and it might muffle their sound.

A good plan in theory. It still didn't work. Not even the quilt would slip from the lid as I pushed.

I had only one remaining choice. I'd almost enacted it earlier, witnesses notwithstanding, but had bailed from a general sense of self-preservation after taking a few too many knocks on the head. Backing into the corner, I folded my wings. I drew my muscles up beneath me. I closed my eyes. Then, kicking off with all I had, I launched myself at the top corner of the tank, smashing my skull again, whipping my wings, shoving with all my force, sideways rather than upward this time. The tank moved about half an inch. The table below fell back on its four legs, bumping its rear against a few of the studs that made up the wall. I withdrew and gathered myself to spring again. Another quarter inch. Another. Another.

Then, on my lucky thirteenth slam, the entire tank plunged over the lip of the table and shattered across the cement. Glass sliced my fingers, my neck, my wings, my tongue as if each splinter were a stinging mosquito. Thomas flew up in his bed like a cuckoo-clock. Disregarding the sharp shards in my skin, I scampered between two studs of the wall and then broke into a full-on run. My thoughts were bent only on one thing: I needed to find a way outside. Once I made it there, H.P. would take care of the rest of the plan.

Retracing my steps - Thomas's steps - brought me back to the door that led into the backyard. I jumped two or three times, clawing with my fingers, but I could only brush the knob. Then I heard Thomas's footsteps, and I had to flee or risk being cornered in the hall between heaps of tires, desks, and buckets of paint.

So I returned to the larger area, dodging cardboard boxes and weights and punching bags and ping-pong tables as best as I was able to. Thomas was always nearby, but he couldn't see any better than I could in the dark. In fact, I remembered with a trickle of hope, magical beings might even have a bit better night vision than humans did, which would set me at the advantage.

It took three minutes to locate the stairs regardless. I moved by darting from cover to cover, peering around edges in an attempt to spot Thomas's shape before I made my next move. Having glass embedded in my feet through my shoes did not make it more enjoyable. But I reached the stairs and started up them, clamboring on wrists and knees. Thomas heard and raced after me.

"Not one more step, Sanderson-"

We were at the top when I ran across another tall white door. Beating my wings, I sprang. I sprang again. As I came down from the third leap, Thomas snatched me up and held me, one arm across my stomach, the other hand cupping my chin and tilting my neck backwards. I couldn't bite him from that position, but I spit like a selkie and thrashed like an elf and kicked like a lawn gnome.

Thomas took the doorknob between his left shoulder and chin and squeezed through. The laundry room turned out to be immediately across from the basement door, and just as I had him about to submit, he popped the lid of the washing machine and stuffed me in. Water splashed my legs. When I stood up, it leveled out at my knees.

"Don't turn it on," I yelped, wrapping my bleeding hands around my shoulders. "My suit is dry-clean only!"

"Thomas? What was that crashing noise?"

A ring of white appeared around his eyes as he slammed down the lid and seemed to whirl around. Jake. The exchange was warbled through the sides of the washing machine, and I didn't really catch a word of it. But Thomas didn't come back for me that night. Even when I heard them making breakfast, dishes clanging, he left me soaked and shivering.

When he did come, he had bread. He passed it down to me, wiggling it until I finally stopped my pacing circle and took it from his hand.

"You look like you didn't sleep at all."

I glared back over my shades and ripped off a solid chunk of bread in my teeth. "I risk drowning if I so much as sit down."

"Aren't you fairy-pixie people supposed to be immortal or something?"

"I drink magic from the surrounding energy field. It doesn't travel well through things like snowstorms, rain, or sitting water. Not unless the water's already been completely saturated with it. I'd asphyxiate."

Thomas made beckoning motions with both hands. "Well, come on, Mister Sanderson. You can't stay in here anyway. Jake will find you, and that won't be good for either of us."

"Where do you intend to take me?" I asked, keeping against the far wall and out of his reach.

"We're off to soccer practice," he said, still low-voiced. "That's where we'll find Ronald, and his fairies too. Here- come on."

I massaged my chin. After another glance at the water, I stepped forward and allowed Thomas to hoist me up with his hands beneath my armpits. He checked over his shoulder as he set me on the floor. Then, not letting go of my arm even when I twisted, he flipped the cover of his red leather backpack and tilted it towards me.

"I won't get in there. I'm not your stuffed tiger. I'm a living being, equal to your kind, and I expect to be treated as such."

He shook his head with apparent exasperation. "Into the bag," he said, and lifted me in. The inside was empty otherwise. Still chewing on my bread, I made sure to scowl at him as he buckled it closed and put his arms cautiously through the straps. Up I went. Three feet tall as I was, my soft bones folded and allowed me to squeeze into a clump of pointed elbows and sharp knees. I placed my eye to the gap in the upper corner to watch as Thomas moved from the laundry room, into the kitchen, and towards the front of the house.

"'Bye, Mom," he called, his arm flapping as though in a wave of departure, and he hustled out the door. It swung shut faster than any pixie ever could have shoved it. I still had one glass shard in my shoe that I hadn't been able to pry out. When I pushed my thumb against it, I drew a bead of purple blood. This, I stuck out of the pack, just to be sure H.P. realized that I was there and moving, since he had probably been awake all night, waiting and watching for me to come out.

Thomas took a bus to the soccer field. I peered through the window as we went, scanning shops and searching for any sign of fairy godparents or pixies out scouting for humans with glowing potential. Eventually, we unloaded and walked the three last blocks to the field. I heard children and feet connecting with padded balls.

That was poor phrasing. I heard voices in addition to the smacking sound of children's feet connecting with padded balls. It was a shame Snow wasn't here. He'd fallen in love with soccer during the second moulting of his wings. And Newman, Hamilton, and Faust didn't dare to mess with him on the field, even though they were solid and broadly-built and he was a hundred thousand years younger.

"What does Ronald look like?" I asked, still tucked snugly in the backpack.

"Light hair blonder than mine. So blond, it's almost white. And sort of curly. Like George Washington. He even has these sort of buck teeth. And he's tall and kind of awkward. Yes, there he is- just went into the bathrooms. That red building over there." Thomas sucked air between his teeth. "Now, how do I lead into this 'Magical Beings 101' conversation?"

I knit my brows. Then I tapped his shoulder with my pointer finger. "I can help with that. There's something I should talk to them about anyway, if it doesn't terribly bother you. For my job- the reason I was searching Tam's farm for them. Put me down, open the door for me, and stay outside until I give the signal. I'll knock three times."

"Oh, I know. I'll just hide in one of the empty stalls. That way I'll make sure I hear you."

I sighed behind my teeth. But, when the coast was clear, he did dump the backpack and allow me into the bathroom (No sign of H.P. yet. Perhaps it was for the best if he stayed out of Thomas's line of sight).

We were met by the stench of too much stale urine enclosed in too small a building for too long. Only one of the two stall doors was shut, and whoever was behind it was muttering either to himself or to a couple of disguised fairies. At my gesture, Thomas set me on the sink counter before he crept away, moving as softly as he had on Tam's farm before he'd caught me beneath the burlap sack. He didn't even shut the blue door all the way behind him so it wouldn't click.

"Pixie," Ronald said when he came out and saw me. Thomas had nailed his description, minus the part that he had a tufted cowlick which rather resembled mine. Two wristbands on his right forearm - one green, the other red - were almost certainly his fairies, because he lay a defensive hand over them as he stepped backwards. That, and I could feel the energy field tugging in their direction. I swung my legs.

"Pixie is correct. I am Mister Sanderson. H.P. sent me down because according to our records, you have two fairies with automatic checks that just bounced."

That got their attention. Two  _poof_ s later, I found myself facing a pair of puzzled, vaguely-irritated godparents. To my relief, I recognized one of them- the red-haired drake with the mustache and the striped elfish hat was Aric Swenski. The damsel with the green hair and the poodle skirt must be his wife, seeing as they shared the same pattern of notches near the pterostigmata in their wings. I didn't know her off the top of my head, but she certainly knew pixies- she gripped her wand lengthwise as she bobbed, her legs tucked near her chest.

"What's this about?" she demanded. "We had nine thousand in our account weeks ago, and we haven't granted any world-bending wishes since. Nothing big at all, really. There was only one elephant, and we returned her to India before our timezone's sunset for 16% back."

"Nonetheless, our reports show you're under about twenty-two hundred. If you're insistent that the mistake is on our side, I need to be examining the automatic deduction systems in your wands."

Aric buzzed his wings. "I was recertified in the '50s, and everything was in working order then." He passed me his wand, without letting go. "This never happened when we were under Twinkletuft. He actually knew his stuff."

My wings twitched forward. I took off the star cap on the wand and shook the black handle until a purple bundle of threedspiral and wires about the radius of a quarter fell into my palm. "No," I said, displaying it, "the green light is glowing. Everything appears in order on the Pixie side. Until this gets sorted out, I need collateral. You can pick this up in Pixie World once you pay your dues."

"I don't take marching orders from freakish pointy-hatted rejects of nature anymore."

"Excuse me?" I asked, tipping up one eyebrow. His mustache fluttered as he huffed through his nose.

"We Fairies do the real work down here on Earth, running around and shelling out our own hard cash to keep the humans safe and happy, and you Pixies just sit around on your tushes all day spying on us and demanding we pay you for it every month. Well, my square little punk friend, I got news for you. You may have conned Twinkletuft out of his business, and you may be weaseling your way up to a monopoly on Fairy magic that rightfully belongs to us, but what it boils down to is, you're all just a bunch of freakishly-mutated, cone-domed, dry-faced, flat-headed, file-filling, broken-crowned, low-life, pen-pushing drones who have to mate with yourselves since no damsel in her right mind would want you, and I don't have to listen to any of you or your self-righteous, obsessive-compulsive, brownie-kissing, wing-twisting, bribe-slinging, geriatric, egotistical, megalomaniac boss at all. First thing tomorrow, I'm taking my business elsewhere. I know what happened in Las Vegas, and frankly, I'm not happy."

"Aric," murmured Ronald.

"Aric," murmured the green fairy. They both inched forward. I thought I heard even Thomas shift his feet.

Closing my eyes, I slid my shades from my nose, folded them up, and tucked them away so they hung from the collar of my shirt. "Did you just call my boss a brownie-kisser?"

"I'm calling you  _all_  brownie-kissers. Your vice president snogging Peridot Swan in the kitchen of Chez Fairee was all over the newspapers back in the Autumn of the Spraying Dolphin, and I've seen too many of your people with star-tipped hats fluttering about the front desks to check the librarians out, thinking no one can see your eyes wandering behind those sunglasses. Once a brownie-kisser, forever a brownie-kisser. You're all genetically identical."

"Aric, love, remember what we agreed on about yelling in front of Ronnie-"

"Buzz off, hon."

"Aric, no. You're better than this. I will count to ten, and I will  _poof_  us out of here. We're going to miss soccer drills. One."

I didn't move.

"Two."

He took my chin in his thumb and forefinger, bracing his other hand against the counter, and I still didn't move. I burned in silence and let him touch me as I racked my memory for something he'd waved his wand for that I could use against him (For instating that H.P. went around taking advantage of them and such- I certainly wasn't going to defend Longwood. Wasn't there something about rabbits? Wilcox had mentioned rabbits).

"Three."

Aric said, "I've been looking for a fight for centuries, tiny."

"Four."

"I'll toss aside my wand and we'll settle this here and now like honest drakes. No magic. No tricks. File  _that_  in triplicate."

"Five. That's enough, Aric. Be the mature-"

"Let's all just-"

"This isn't any of your business, Ronnie," Aric snarled, and Ronald flinched and backed away, holding his cheek out of reflex. I moved my eyes between him and the green damsel. She held up six of her eight fingers, hovering at her godkid's shoulder with an exasperated look etched across her face that told me this was a regular occurrence for Aric (Was this the one year a century all the elves came into heat? He clearly had an elf or half-elf mother to give him his hat, and perhaps it was pricking at him). Fairies didn't hand over their wands to pixies easily - particularly not when tensions were this high - but if I could…

"Seven."

"Okay, Aric Swenson," I decided, unknotting my tie as he pulled back. "Would you mind if I suggested a way to make this more interesting?"

"Eight."

"If you win, you get the satisfaction of having beaten a lone pixie to a pulp where there are no others around to swarm once the deed is done. I'll back off and we'll drop the charges."

"Nine."

"But if I win, I want a smooch with your wife. Do we have a deal?"

Her wings began to whirr at a higher pitch. "I'm not Aric's to give away.  _Drakes._  And for what it's worth,  _I'd_  rather kiss a brownie."

"I can pull off the long brownie nose, kissing bug wings, soft hat, and stereotypical bowtie if that's something you're into. All it takes is a starpiece."

"You-" she sputtered, flushing the precise color of her husband's hair. She lowered the two fingers she'd borrowed from Ronald. "Kick his butt, babe."

Aric held up his hand to silence the both of us. "Pixies do not kiss fairies. The Head Pixie is a businessman in a long line of businessmen. You're a natural servant race, identical and obedient, bred by him to perform his bidding- whatever cute and fuzzy lies about fatherhood he fills your head with. Don't pretend you match or even near us on the social ladder. You're nothing but simple-minded clone drones, washed-up mimics of the original who will eventually run your company into the ground. It would seem every one of us knows it, except for you."

"Ah, like your wife knows about the magazines you  _poof_  up once you're certain she's fast asleep in the rabbit hutch beside you?"

"… Aric?"

He lunged forward. I rolled backwards into the sink, kicking out with my feet as my head struck the faucet. My shoe connected with his knee, perhaps, but it didn't really do much. Aric swooped up, wings sawing at the mirror, and banked around for a second pass. Thomas at last gave up waiting for my imaginary signal and streaked out from the stall.

"Oh no," Ronald groaned. His green fairy  _poof_ ed immediately into a soccer ball, but Aric, who was still wrestling with me over the two halves of his wand and winning easily, was not nearly as quick on the draw. His wife covered for him too late. Thomas's pointer finger flew out.

"You've been lying to everyone for three years! You  _do_  have fairies, Ronald!"

I was beaten and sore after the events of the last few days. When we rolled off the counter, Aric-turned-fat-ginger cat pinned me to the damp brown tiles and, with a hind paw between my wings, twisted my arms behind my back. He pulled the star cap and handle from my fists. But before he could finish screwing the cap back on with awkward fuzzy paws, an explosion of pink - searing hot with Fairy magic -  _poof_ ed its way into the center of the bathroom. Six feet nine inches and almost twelve entire tan pounds of pure von Strangle bloodline, staff not included (Oh, how I loathed those staffs). The force tossed us all like salad, knocking my shades from my collar. They clattered against the wall.

" _Ronald Carter_ ," thundered the newcomer. He lowered his staff, the massive star at its tip blazing with yellow-pink. A bleak Ronald and mortified Thomas grabbed one another's hands and pressed themselves between the towel dispenser and garbage bin. The green fairy  _poof_ ed both Aric and herself back into regular form and took up a sentry position at Ronald's elbow. I smoothed down my tie and brushed the grit from my cowlick as I sat up.

"Hello, Jorgen. I managed to get myself separated from H.P some time ago. Since you're already here, would you mind giving us a lift to Pixie World? My wing's entirely useless and it's still a long walk. We'll compensate you for the trouble."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Sanderson, I see you down there. You can stop flailing your puny little pixie hands at me."

Aric's wife dropped her lower jaw. "You  _didn't_  just out us for a free ride."

"I walk like an angel, I talk like an angel, but I'm a devil in disguise." That sounded nice, actually. I'd have to write that down. Maybe I could convince someone to write a song about it.

"Jorgen, please- it was him!" Ronald protested, but he took the mind-wiping blast from Jorgen's little yellow forget-a-cin capsule just the same. Those were Da Rules. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed into Thomas's arms. Thomas begged for an explanation and received one, while I clawed at the chokehold Aric had just slotted around my neck. My wings may not be as strong as a fairy's, but I managed to shove him loose as I twisted away. When he crumpled to his knees, Thomas's eyes met mine for a single bleary instant. Then it was over.

"You two," Jorgen said, turning his wand on Ronald's ex-godparents. "You are to be spending the next forty-eight hours on furlough at Wishdocs. Do not be leaving its fun-time swimming party and obligatory luau location for anything. You," he said to me, "tell your Head Pixie that I am wanting to see everything in Carter's drawer by sundown."

"So you're giving us a lift," I confirmed, keeping expressionless as I unfolded my shades.

"Ha! Ha ha!" He grabbed Aric and the wife in his fist and squeezed until their eyes bulged. "After what happened in Las Vegas? I believe it was part of your punishment that you and the Head Pixie find your way home by your own means."

My smirk dropped. "Under  _Whimsifinado v. Caudwell_ , you have to take me back to Pixie World. I don't have the Head Pixie's written consent to be out here."

Jorgen got down on one knee, bringing his staff uncomfortably close to my ear. Air hot enough to boil water spewed from his mouth when he said, "If you wish to be throwing around the legalities like that, tiny pixie, then you might be expecting me to ask, are you at least over the age of majority?"

"Yes-"

"Were you present in this bathroom when I was arriving in here?"

"Yes-"

"Along with the two human boys?"

"Well, yes-"

Jorgen scrunched his brows upwards in a triangle. "And did you interact physically or vocally with either one of them?"

"Technically yes, but-"

"Were you causing them harm in doing so?"

"Not directly-"

"Then under  _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_ , I do not hold jurisdiction over you what with you being a neutral party. I trust that you can make it to your Bridge with those puny wings. It is hardly a three-hour trip as the dragonfly skims." He lifted his staff above his head. A whirlwind picked up inside the bathroom- not because it was necessary for the teleportation, but because he was a show-off with money to burn. One by one, he and the fairies vanished in puffs of pink smoke.

" _Jorgen_!" I hollered as the breeze whipped my cowlick and the tails of my gray suit. My pant legs, still slightly damp from my long night in the washing machine, clung to my skin. Chilly. As the rushing air faded back into stagnant calm, I hugged my shoulders and took a step forward. Searching the ceiling. Once more I shouted his name, but his particles had disappeared into the energy field.

My noise stirred the two humans. It was just as well- I couldn't have pulled the heavy bathroom door open on my own. They mumbled and even laughed as they picked themselves up. Memories of the first minute would be lost, the second and third hazy, and the fourth forgettable. In five, their thoughts would fully knit together again and it would be as though nothing had ever happened.

I clung to the pipes beneath the sink counter as they washed their hands. Then they left. I darted out just before the door could shut and ducked around to the far side of the bathrooms. Away from the prying eyes of the soccer field. At least their voices and the distance would conceal mine. Tucked behind the building, licking my lips, cupping my hands in a funnel around my mouth, I called, "H.P.! Boss! H.P.! I managed to escape from the humans all on my own!"

No reply, even after minutes. I slapped my forehead. He couldn't find me. Of course he couldn't find me! He may not have realized that Thomas had brought me into the bathroom, and in addition to that he'd want to remain out of sight as much as possible. Thinking I was still in the backpack, he'd perhaps retreated until the soccer game's end. But if I could give him another scent trail of pheromones, that might bring him to the yard.

So, drawing back my lips, I turned again to my soft skin. I began at my left shoulder and moved down close to my wrist, nipping and tearing and nipping and tearing. When that was done, I scanned the pale gray sky again. He wasn't coming yet. The right arm, then- he'd definitely find me if the right arm was bleeding too. I bit that one all over. Spitting bright emerald blood, I stood there, shoulders heaving, wings sweeping near the backs of my knees, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I took shelter up in a solitary chestnut tree that still had some orange and gold leaves. The day bled away into night, and then into morning, and I kept raking the stars with my eyes, occasionally nipping my arms again when the blood caked green across my elbow joints and hares. I stopped calling, or maybe I didn't. I couldn't here my own voice anymore. Did that mean the pitch of it was two high?

My lashes fluttered against the branch I'd lane my cheek against. I smacked my ear and my neck. I had to stay awake. Couldn't let H.P. miss me. We had a schedule to keep. Couldn't risk halving a human stumble across me. Probly wouldn't end up in Snack Shack like Eunice's basket.

This wasn't a question. It was my job. H.P. needed me. I simply had to stay waked. I  _had_  to stay awake. I had to stay awake. I had to staty awake. I had toi staytfd sEdxzabxvfvfvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvc


	7. Longwood v. Sanderson VIII

_**Longwood v. Sanderson VIII, "The Bumper Cars Case":** Against public outcry from Fairies and Pixies alike, the Fairy Council ruled in favor of Sanderson Chipixie concerning the legal adoption of the angels Garrett Cabrera, Elizabeth Lovell, and Kenneth Lovell on the grounds that he had attained the age of maturity as determined in _ Whimsifinado v. Caudwell  _and neither was legal adoption expressly forbidden nor directly indicated as illegitimate by the ruling of that case. As Pixies are beyond Fairy jurisdiction, the details of direct contact shall be left for the Head Pixie to determine. Regardless, on the grounds of_ Amity Angel Safety and Protective Recall Agency v. Abdul _, binding Pixie magic to Angel magic ["wish"] remains prohibited so far as it relates to the question of [directly] siphoning the health of the Angel core ["heart"] for a magical boost; the binding locks on the three angels in question shall not be lifted prior the moulting of their mortal skins. The physical and mental health of a Guardian's angel[s] is to remain, as always, the first priority of all members of the Seelie Court._

* * *

Late in the afternoon of sticky Sunday, I first tied my tie, then slid down from the chestnut tree to the clipped grass and scored an impressive array of scratches in the process. My arms were  _searing_. I stared at them, bleary-brained. Something with sharp teeth had torn my skin to streamers. Me. I'd done it to myself. Why did I do that? Made no sense.

As I picked at scabbed patches of dry green-brown blood, I made a list of things I wanted. Water. Maybe even a shower. My wing to heal. To find H.P. and Flappy Bob, obviously. Did I want food? I wasn't the type of pixie who ever ate very much. I'd snacked on chestnuts for most of the night anyway. Before I headed out anywhere, I gathered up the ones that remained and stuck them in the pockets of my dirty suit coat. That was another thing I wanted- to wash my clothes. And not at Thomas's house.

I heard whistles and clapping. Feet skidded across yellow grass and punted soft balls through the air. Another soccer game was in progress. Nibbling on my lip, I picked my way through the parking lot. No humans caught me, although several magpies and a wandering gray cat sized me up with deep suspicion.

The magpies had cornered a bag of Doritos in the gutter. I approached in an attempt to frighten them off, and they cawed in warning. When I flapped my wings, they flapped back. Typically, that was how it went. Birds were never sure what to think of us- three-foot-tall creatures that bore the traits of both human predators and delicious insects.

Today, I was mostly insect. They chased me across the lot to the main road, me with my sliced arms shielding my head. Their beaks nipped my wings. Talons scraped the back of my neck and snagged in my shirt. Not because they thought they could eat me, perhaps, so much as instinct related to the look of my wasp wings. I threw a rock at them, clipped one above the eye, and they regrouped by the Dorito bag. Flipping up my collar, I set off up the road. My wings, still useless for flight, were at least able to fan me down.

After a few minutes, I crossed paths with a creek and satisfied my thirst. Then I continued walking. As I went, I massaged my sore arms. Though I'd rinsed them in the water, infection remained a serious possibility.

Even though it pained me, internally as much as on the outside, I knew I had no choice. If H.P. hadn't reunited with me yet, he was still looking. He needed the scent of those pheromones. I ripped another small chunk from my skin. Minty, buttery dog hair caressed the roof of my mouth. The scent could carry for a quarter of a mile. He'd come; Fairies could taste, Anti-Fairies were all born with sharp hearing, and the Refracted had excellent vision, but Pixies arguably had the greatest sense of smell. Until then, I'd make my way back to Tam's farm where I'd last seen the car.

First, I found the bus stop. When I checked my pockets, I came up with no human money. No use trying to pass as a child then, especially in my muddy gray suit. I kept to places of cover and walked on, cutting through unfenced backyards and patches of woods.

I'd grown sick of the warm and bitter taste, so when my bleeding stopped, I took up a sharp stone from the road, spit on it to clear away what dirt I could, and sawed another cut near my shoulder through my shirt. H.P. didn't come, so he was likely already back at the truck waiting for me, and must have been out of range. My walking against the wind probably didn't make matters any easier for him.

Minutes trickled like dry sand through my fingers. The next time I found water, I dunked my cowlick in it. I found a stick and trailed it through the dust of the back Jetmore roads. I whistled tunes and tested out a few song lyrics I'd been writing and revising over the last week. Sweat dribbled down both my front and my back until my white shirt turned translucent. My tongue poked from between my lips, panting, for a different reason than the autumn heat.

Forty-something minutes later, when I stumbled across Tam's farm, I stopped in my tracks. The pick-up truck was just  _gone_. Only the marks of its wheels alongside the ATV treads in the mud implied that it had ever existed. An incomprehensible word left my lips. Abandoning my stick, I rushed forward and patted my hands in the air where I had seen it last, in case it had become invisible. But it wasn't. I shouted H.P.'s name and slit another gash along my elbow to see if he was around. But he wasn't.

I put my right thumb and forefinger into my mouth and squeezed my teeth. I'd given the keys to Flappy as a toy when we'd been trapped by the black cat. Someone had stolen the car and the baby. H.P. was on their trail. That made logical sense, of course- Flappy Bob could not produce pheromones in his blood the way I could. H.P. could not afford to lose him and could come back for me. He trusted me to take care of myself in his temporary absence. Once he had secured Flappy, he would return.

My wings twitched. Folding the apex in my small hand, I paced along the road. He would come. That, at least, was obvious. He could scent my pheromones. Responding to them was instinct for any nearby pixie. He'd come back once he retrieved Flappy. All I had to do was wait. Waiting I could do. Few pixies were better at waiting than I was. I could wait and wait and wait. It came naturally to me, waiting. I'd been raised to wait with the utmost patience. If I put my mind to it, I could wait for anything.

"You want an apple?"

I glanced up as I completed another line of pacing, and paused on the scuffed toes of my shoes. Tam leaned against the edge of the horse corral, all blonde-haired and freckle-faced, crunching through an apple of her own. A second one, she held out to me. I gazed back at her without blinking.

"Oh, so we're using tinfoil hats now. Pixie.  _Pixie_. Do I look like an elf to you?"

"So it's not going to protect me from getting blasted by your dad-king or anyone?"

"No! Why would I line  _my_  hat with tinfoil if it blocked the effects of magic on me? That's ridiculous and unintelligent. I'd lose all strength to pry it off and then asphyxiate."

"Oh, thank you. I was praying you'd say so. I was broiling." She took off the cone of foil and replaced it with a wide straw brim. She bought it! She actually bought it!

_Come on, H.P. Anytime now._

"You've been tromping back and forth out here for three and somethin' hours. You gotta eat sometime. It's too hot to be wearing those long sleeves- what you need's a nice farm hat like this one, see. Come on. Apple for ya' thoughts, Prince Sanderson."

Still watching the lump of foil through slitted eyes, I asked, "Where's Thomas?"

"I was gonna ask you, snap case. Or ask you where his mind is, anyway. Seems like it flew the coop after I left his place th'other night." She bit into her apple again. Flecks of cool juice sprayed the dirt. "I don't gotta get straight A's to guess that you're behind this."

I brushed a few purple droplets from my arm. "Jorgen wiped his memory. Do you have water?"

She smiled. "Right here in my pretty glass bottle. You want some, don't you? Who's Jorgen?"

"The Fairy ambassador and Head Keeper of Da Rules. We had a run-in with Ronald and Thomas got caught in the crossfire. In my defense, I warned him." I reached up for the apple. Tam pulled it away. Excuse me? That wasn't how this worked.

"How do I get his memories back in him?"

I climbed onto the first horizontal beam of the fence, straining for her water bottle, which she'd placed on the fence post beside the tinfoil. "You can't. Well, you  _can_ ; we have to keep them until you shed your mortal skins for legal reasons -  _mff_  - outlined in  _Ebonii v. Cairo_ , but the Fairy Council has to approve it, and that doesn't happen a lot." My fingers swiped only empty air. I shifted a step closer, grinding my teeth. "They have to like you. Think you can be helpful. That stuff."

She slid the bottle an inch in the opposite direction. "Why are you still around here? You spying or somethin'?"

"The Head Pixie is supposed to meet me here. I'm just waiting for him to come back. If you don't cause me any trouble, I can assure you we won't cause any for you." I tried a second time to take the apple. Again, Tam drew it back like a fishing line. She edged a hint further over the fence so her hat nearly brushed up against mine. I leaned as far back as possible without releasing my hold on the slat, wings fluttering.

"Is he the chrome dome with glasses in the suit with the big forehead and pointy hat?"

Suppressing my cringe at each misplaced modifier, I said, "Did you see him?"

Tam pointed down the dirt path. "He drove off yesterday. Almost hit that big tree stump where the ax is. Hey, you want a sunflower seed?"

I studied the road with just one eye, then refocused my attention on her pale freckles. "How long ago did he drive back this way?"

"Huh?"

"H.P. wouldn't drive away from Jetmore knowing that I was still here." My fingers came in contact with the hot tinfoil. I yanked them back and only just caught myself before I could have stuck them in my mouth. Very unprofessional, that. "When did he turn around?"

"Cripes, I dunno. I wasn't watching the whole time. I got things to do with my life." Tam lowered the apple. As my one available hand neared it, she flipped it to her other palm above my head. "Nah, I'm just messing with you. Here, take it. And however much water you want- I'll get more later. Got it? That bottle's glass, so take care. Can you eat all that by yourself?"

Dropping back to the road, I sunk my teeth into the apple. It was warmer and drier than I'd wanted it to be, but I chewed it anyway. As I chewed, I thought. As I thought, I worried. Jetmore wasn't necessarily a large town by human standards, but it wouldn't be easy to locate him. I'd have to walk up and down, cutting my hands and waving my blood around in the air, all the while avoiding pestering humans.

"You gonna stay out here all day?" Tam asked, watching as I took to pacing again, with her bottle in hand and its cap between my fingers.

"He'll come back. I'm supposed to meet him here."

"Where're you going?"

"Home to Pixie World."

"Oh yeah. That name's lame."

"On paper it's officially called Meum-Nōmen-Domus-Est-Spriggan-Hame-Vivite-Vitam-Vestram-Et-Nihil-Paenite, but even we have difficulty saying it. Sometimes 'Sprigganhame' works for shorthand." I took another bite of apple and transferred sticky juice from my mouth to the back of my wrist. The bottle clinked against the lower clasp on my suit. A fruit fly buzzed around my head.

"You look like you're dressed up for a funeral or a wedding."

I glanced down at my messy clothes. "It's just what H.P. wants me to wear every day. For work. We're supposed to make a good impression."

"S'it uncomfortable?"

"I've hardly worn anything else since I lived with the will o' the wisps when I was a nymph." My fingers fiddled with my tie, which I'd loosened about forty-five minutes ago and should probably fix in Tam's presence. "I hope H.P. hasn't run into any of them. They lived a little further north, around the Nebraska area, Kalysta, Gabbi, Coral, Idona, Veruka, Canary and all them, but they did disperse some after the Great Flood…"

"Which one have you pinned?"

I wrinkled my nose. "I haven't pinned Idona. Why would you say that?"

"Your shades don't much cover your eyes when I'm all the way up here, and I could see 'em darting when you started listing names." Tam finished off her apple and put her thumb in her mouth. "And now you're getting defensive about just one of them. She cute?"

Shaking my head, I continued my pacing. "Idona was something like a foster sister to me when I was much, much younger, and even if she weren't, pixies do not fall in love."

"Uh-huh. Then where do your adorable baby pixies come from?"

"From the Head Pixie, actually. We're an all-drake race who reproduce on our own, without copulation. Do you know anything about the  _Pix-_  er,  _Wolbachia_  bacterium? No, I suppose not. Before your time; urging Simeon Wolbach's many-great grandsons to bring his field guides and journals from Yugopotamia to Earth took sixteen generations alone. We're still recovering from how much we had to shell out for Cupid to retranslate them- vendetta against all of us for the number of times Anti-Sanderson's declared war on the pixie exhibit of his family's menagerie, you know. Charming little place. Five hundred years I'll never get back and Madigan's entire childhood was destroyed, but charming. Hmm. Do you know how amoebas divide? Pixie reproduction is something like that- that's what his big forehead's for. And the nymphs are rather wrinkly. Not very adorable."

Tam stuck her tongue out at me. "Cheap and gross and weird. I won't push it. Uh… You sure you don't want more water with the last of that apple?"

"Save it for the selkies. I don't expect to be here much longer." Handing the empty glass bottle back through the fence, I stared up the road where I had come. "He should be back soon. He's supposed to meet me here. Perhaps he ran into trouble."

She watched me walk and walk, but I halted when she said, "Should I get the baby?"

"What… baby?"

"He was with you guys, right? My aunt took the baby out of your car, before the Head Pixie went back to it and drove off someplace."

A tremor ran across my wings. "Did he… see?"

"Yeah, think so. I saw him sitting up on the barn roof. My aunt fed the baby some corn and stuff, and then I looked out the window and he just drove away. The Head Pixie king guy, I mean. I was amazed he could reach the pedals. Like magic."

I folded my hands over my nose as best as I could around the remnents of the apple. "No, no, no…"

"Well, if you don't want the baby-"

"I won't believe you." My fingers slid into my ears. "H.P. didn't… He wouldn't… He's not the type to…" Shaking out my wings, I tossed aside the thin apple core. "Would you bring me Flappy Bob? I… I suppose I must be on my way."

Tam froze like marble. "That's Flappy Bob? You kidnapped  _Flappy Bob Flappotini_ , the baby clown? Cripes, we're gonna be in mega trouble when the cops show up. How do we explain this? 'I'm sorry, sir, but the fairies brought him to us'. Oh! Changeling children! You really-"

I frowned back at her. "Excuse me, but only huldufólk engage in the changeling children mess. And I can personally assure you, we did not kidnap him. In fact, I'd go so far as to say we rescued him. He'd have died if we hadn't stretched out our hand. Believe me, I'd rather have stayed in Pixie World."

She mimicked my expression, squinting. "So, you're telling me you came down to Earth to help him?"

"Yes, he wasn't safe where he was. His parents don't treat him kindly or responsibly- sometimes they bash his head or twist his limbs. He still isn't safe here with you, either. His heart is very sick and he needs magical help. Now, may I take him? Only H.P. knows where he needs to go. He's magic."

"I'll have to get him away from my aunt," she grumbled, scooping up my discarded apple core. "Flappy Bob. You've gotta be joshing me." Lacing her fingers together, she stretched her arms above her head. "Have you ever ridden a horse before, Prince Sanderson?"

Flashbacks from the War of the Angels played out before my eyes. Me clutching Longwood's sweaty, nervous body and straining over my shoulder to see if H.P. was following us or still spinning thick lines of magic between his fingers at the tall pink gate of Anti-Pixie Isle. Hawkins clinging to my neck as he waved cookies above his head and his voice hoarse from shouting like an auctioneer. Wilcox's violet muscles rippling beneath me, black mane whipping against my mouth. "I've ridden a pegasus."

"That'll do. Duck beneath the fence and let's get you on Gingersnap."

"On… the horse. Me. A pixie on a horse."

"Trust me, when I come running back out here, you're gonna want to already be on the horse. Don't sweat it." Tam walked away across the corral, motioning with her hand. She didn't snap her fingers to signal me to follow. Huh. With a last look at the dusty road, I took a hold of one of the fence rungs and slipped after her. Tam brushed and saddled the brown horse while I from a safe distance studied the tinfoil hat for signs of sentience, and when she was satisfied that all was in order, she held out her hands for me. Ignoring the gesture, I placed my fist in the stirrup and boosted myself up. She did need to lift me there at the end, but she didn't swing me straight up from the ground like some sort of toy.

"You steady?"

I wrapped both hands around the knob at the front lip of the saddle. "Good as I can be. However, I fail to see the purpose in my being up here."

"You'll need to make a getaway," was her reply as she swung over the fence and started towards the door.

"Hm. Smoof no. I said I'd  _ridden_  a pegasus. I didn't say I'd controlled him. His mind's only there so-so once the fagigglyne is pumping- We crashed into the High Count's castle- Tam? If this is a trick, I'm jumping off and you won't find me. Tam?"

She disappeared inside with a flick of blonde pigtails. I'd hardly blinked two or three times before she returned, hefting a blue backpack. This was passed up to me with a shrug. "Thomas and I usually go hunting for butterfly fairies when the rain drives them up around this time, but his heart's not in it anymore."

"What's in here?" I asked, holding the bag as far from my body as I could manage without dropping it. Not an easy feat with it as heavy as it was. The contents clicked and clacked.

"A flashlight, a whistle, a net, chunk of bread, couple apples, nuts, some more tinfoil, and glass bottles full of drinking water. There's like seven of those, so try not to drop any 'cuz that's all you're getting. Just hold that for me- I need that backpack for school tomorrow."

I continued to hold the bag as far from my body as I could manage without dropping it. "I'm not going anywhere with a net. Get rid of it."

She gave me a curious look, but flipped up the top flap and pulled the soft fishing net from the bag. "You don't like it?" she asked when I bared my teeth.

"Get rid of it."

"So it would bother you if I came at you like-"

" _Get rid of it_!" I flailed my arms as she clamped the net over my head, tickling my sides with her fingers as she let out odd guttural noises. My teeth nipped one knuckle. Then, chuckling, she pulled the net back. Bundling it up, she tossed it across the corral. Part of it looped on the edge of the fence and caught. I eyed it for a moment, but when it stopped swaying and continued to dangle, I allowed myself to relax.

"You may as well lose the tinfoil. I doubt the opportunity to put it to use will crop up."

"Sure. Still good sitting here? Right-o. I'll be back in a minute with your kidnapped clown child." Again, Tam bounded off. I focused my attention to the saddlehorn, kneading it with my fingers and palms. Sizzling fire burned so hot along my aching arms, I couldn't feel it anymore. They'd heal when I took a nap while in contact with a starpiece, but it couldn't come soon enough.

My fingers began to pluck at Gingersnap's mane until she turned her neck and snorted at me. I stared her down. Then my eyes trailed back to the farmhouse. I didn't trust humans. I didn't trust Tam. And I especially didn't trust what she'd said about H.P. driving away without Flappy Bob. He must not have realized Flappy wasn't in the car. In fact, Flappy probably  _was_  in the car, and this was all a trap and Tam would come running out with a bigger net or a jacket flipped inside out. H.P. would be hunting through Jetmore for me, and here I was, lollygagging on work hours-

Just as I was sliding down from Gingersnap's saddle, Tam ran back from the farmhouse holding a yellow bundle spotted with red patches. "What's your problem, skittertoes?" she puffed to the twitching horse. "You don't like Sanderson? Here," to me, "get back up there. My aunt won't stay in the kitchen forever."

Flappy's choking cries died as he saw me. He reached up his arms. I reached down as Tam tucked him into my hold. Flappy felt my face with his fingers, and saw that it was good. He cooed and sighed. Then he spit up on his chest. I pretended not to notice as it crept beneath my collar.

"Can you hold him?" Tam asked, swinging herself up behind me. "Might help if you sit him up in front of you. And here, I got you my grandpa's hat. Cute, huh? And I'm not just sayin' that 'cuz it looks just like mine. He's got ten, so you can keep that. Do I just squeeze it here between your head and your little floating pointy cap?"

"It's- too big- What are you-?"

Snapping the reins, kicking the horse's sides, Tam drove Gingersnap through the gate of the corral (which she'd thankfully opened when she'd returned with the little clown). Flappy clapped his hands and I wrapped my free arm around his chest. " _What are you doing? Get off! This makes no sense! This is neither safe nor in the plan_!"

" _Yee-haw_! Now, that's rocking out! This is what fun is, Mickey Mouse!"

I almost dropped Flappy again. All of him. Off the side of the horse where the hooves would have sliced through his eye sockets and crushed his skull into his brain. As long as I was clutching him, I couldn't whip around and sink my teeth into Tam's skin. Yes. Very fun.

"I thought your wings would hurt when you beat them against me, but they're soft. Can you pixie-types really fly with those teeny things? Whoa, watch the hat. You'll lose it."

Gingersnap broke into a gallop along the dirt path. My stomach bobbed in multiple directions, like I was flying through winter turbulence. Tam called out, but I didn't hear what she said.

After a damp, sickening afternoon of blurry Kansas rocks, dipping fields, and the occasional attempt to down some water against the bright sun, Tam pulled in the reins. "This is as far as I can take you."

A shell jumped up and down in my throat as I peered across the looming gray-brown grasslands and young continents of winter wheat. Light hills rolled one into the next, sprinkled with puffy yellow flowers. No chamomile. "You aren't coming all the way?"

"I've gotta split home by dinner. The only reason I took you at all is 'cuz I don't want my family gettin' caught with a stolen baby. I was real careful not to get my fingerprints on him. Don't bring him back."

I examined the long drop between me and the ground. Tam dismounted and, prying Flappy from my fingers, helped me to the wild grass. Flappy was next. Then she emptied the blue backpack.

"I need this for school," she said again. "How much can you carry?"

"I…"

"Let me help. I'm a good stacker. Let's see. I can squeeze an apple in either one of your pockets. Put the nuts in here. Hey, chestnuts! You like pens, I see. I think your watch chain is neat. Is this a wallet? One crumpled, dead daisy (You sure you didn't pin that girl you were talking about?) Jacket on. Now you can hold the baby like this. Back to my stuff. Squeeze the bread here between your chest and the baby. I can stick three, four- five water bottles in this space here under your neck. That works out- I'll take the empty one and this one home with me. Flashlight goes here. Adorable straw hat goes on your head. There. Ready, set, you bet. How d'ya like them peaches?"

I raised my eyebrows. "I can't move. If I move, I'll drop everything. I'm unsteady on my feet as it is."

Tam shook her head. "Then take one step at a time. Yeah, right now. Come on. There you go. See? Not terribly hard. You just gotta make it all across the grasslands like that." Then she stood, dusting her pants. "I'm off. I really gotta go, or I'll get my hide tanned."

I bit my lower lip and stared up at her face. "What's this part of the state like?"

"It's all wheat and sand sagebrush pretty far out. Li'l sorghum, and maybe corn. Loads of open prairie. See that silver ribbon about a hill over? State road. You can follow that 'til you hit Missouri if you want. Both a' you, drink your water. Don't get overheated. Straight up, lose the long sleeves sooner rather than later. You might wanna take cover early if you see the low, dark clouds sweeping in too close. It's s'posed to rain tomorrow. I dunno how it is for pixies, but Thomas used to say the butterfly fairies came out in the rain 'cuz their tunnels leak and it makes 'em nervous. You can see them around the rocks and sagebrush sometimes, 'specially if you go further north." She blew sticky hair from her mouth. "You said it was still east to your Pixie World?"

"Maybe an hour or two from here." Then I remembered how much I was carrying, and sucked at my gums. "Maybe three hours."

"Wish I could come. Well, if that Fairy Council of yours ever wants to return my friend's memories, just swing by." Tam rubbed her lower jaw. "And if anyone asks who kidnapped the clown, I wasn't in on it. No kidding- don't get me involved. I'm putting my faith in you, 'cuz I saw the blue fairy invent a horse from thin air and, well, we know Ronald's fairies seem like they're nice 'cuz he's always happy these days. So don't screw this up. Just take care of the kid, okay? Find him a happy family."

"Can you really not stay longer? You're bound to be more familiar with this place than I am."

"You'll figure somethin' out," she called, turning Gingersnap westward. She tipped her straw hat. "Are you the Pixie prince or ain't you?"

Reins flicked. Hooves smacked the hard road. They went off, leaving me on the grasslands all alone. Clutching Flappy and the supplies, I began to pick my way down the first rise, but then I was struck by a thought and stumbled a few yards back, dropping items. The flashlight rolled away. My hat blew from my head, bumped against my floating cap, thought about it, then settled back down until a second gust finally tore it off. One of the water bottles shattered over a half-buried stone and spilled its precious liquid into the grass.

"I appreciate all your generosity, Tam! I'll see if I can't make your success my annual project someday! You, and your future children! I'll watch over them myself and I promise they'll be well cared for!"

I stayed until they almost disappeared, but averted my gaze before she and the horse could cross over the horizon. China used to tell us that if you said good-bye and watched the Unwinged until you couldn't see them anymore, then the next time you crossed their path would be at their gravesite.

I picked up the bread, the flashlight, my hat. I dropped the whistle in the process, but at least caught the remaining four water bottles before they too could break. Flappy gurgled with spit bubbles and slapped my face. Readjusting my balance, I stared at my growing shadow in the dying grass. Now… Where did we go? What did we do? What did we eat? Which trail did we walk? Where did we rest? Which animals did we avoid? When were we too far past Mushroom Rock? What if I missed it? I didn't come down to Earth often. Not for lengthy periods of time. I wasn't as familiar with this area as H.P. was…

It took me a moment to realize I'd drawn blood from my lip. Like Flappy, I spit. Then, waddling penguin-like, I meandered down the first hill. He made warbled noises, and I didn't get far. Eventually, the whine in my throat overpowered my ears, filling the air with the buzzing of wasp wings. Depositing everything I held, I raced back up the hill and brought my hands to my mouth.

"Tam! Tam? Come back! I can't- I can't do this on my own! Don't leave me! Not all alone! Please, please- not alone! I need directions! Tell me what to do!"

She couldn't hear me. I ran down the hill, still calling her name. I ran for three hills. Then, puffing from the unfamiliar strain on my awkward feet, I flopped onto my stomach. Blood roared and whirled in my ears. After a moment, I mopped my forehead with my tie and rolled onto my back.

"H.P.! Sir, where are you? I need you!" Scratching at my arms- sitting up- biting again- shoulders trembling- the droplets stinging and falling on my slacks and shifting between pink and purple and maybe a flash of green- " _H.P._!"

When my arms were sufficiently soaked in blood, I clutched my knees to my chest and set my chin on top of them. The apexes of my wings pressed against my temples. I shook my head. More than once. The wind blew mainly from the east, away from Pixie World, but on occasion it would shift back and the scent of my pheromones would twirl away in that direction. Empty, empty expanse of grasslands.

The most difficult pill to swallow, I think, was the half hour it took to peel my hands away from my mouth and, with deliberate Pixie care, pretend that I didn't remember how he'd had me sit in the car while he went back to be sentimental about his golf course.

Flappy's howling eventually became too much for me to ignore, even three hills away and with the wind carrying his cries this way and that. Scraping dirt from a few of my still-bleeding bite marks, most of them having relatively calmed to purple again, I hauled myself back to him.

There were facts to face. This wasn't Flappy's cornfield, with H.P. hiding just nearby. This wasn't Eunice's fence, with her clipping steadily at the chain links with her garden shears. The spotlight was focused solely on me. Taking care of me.

The wind had scattered the supplies. Tracking down the hat alone took five minutes. Even Flappy's blanket had torn loose from around him, and the baby himself had crawled part of the way over the next rise. I gathered it all together with the emotionless expression expected from my kind. Flappy greeted me by taking my collar in his fists and spitting up. I gave up counting the soppy human tears. He had to understand that I couldn't pay attention to him  _all_  the time. I had things to do. If he wanted my respect, he needed to earn it. Pull his own weight. Aid me in shouldering my burdens too. That's what gives somebody worth.

Avoiding the state road was obvious. The first human who saw me was bound to question what I was doing, wandering out here with potentially stolen goods and a kidnapped, whining baby. The trip had to be made in bursts. Hat or no hat, Flappy and I could only last for so long before I needed to carefully set everything down for water. By the time I got packed up again, he'd whine for more. The hat didn't fit on my head and blew off multiple times. I continually dropped the flashlight or the whistle or the bread. Sometimes, just the sheer amount of all I had tipped me on its own, and I either beat my wings hard to recalibrate my footing, or plunged forward without being able to put out my hands to brace for impact. H.P. wouldn't have fallen. He was used to accounting for the weight of his own pointed head.

Don't… tell him I said that.

The sun oozed down, quick as fairy wingbeats. I kept glancing back each time I remembered I was on a time crunch, which perhaps I shouldn't have done, as it caused more items to spill across the grass. If H.P. were here, he would have managed to come up with a better system for carrying the supplies. He was good at things like that. Somehow, he'd get all the bottles to balance up, or maybe hold the bread in his mouth. That sort of worked, didn't it?

My cheeks were almost certainly bright red. I was panting. Actually panting, like a human. How revolting. The next time Flappy whined for a water break, I pulled my tie all the way off. Frowning in what might be considered a thoughtful manner, I tilted it back and forth in my hands. Then I poured the last of the second bottle's precious liquid over it. Once I had, I looped it around my forehead so the wet soaked into my scalp and kept back my hair. Maybe I could get in on this innovation business after all. My gray jacket, I knotted around my waist. It brushed the back of my knees with every step. I told Flappy it was my princely cape.

After a time, we ran across one of those wide sorghum fields that Tam had mentioned. I got turned around in it, and several times ended up in the wrong corner. We depleted our water drip by drip. During one of our rests, I spotted a shadow against the blue sky. Butterfly wings flared in blue and black. Just circling. The bread in my mouth fell to the dirt.

"Will o' the wisp."

"Wih wisp? Wee wisk? Ah!"

I pressed myself deeper into the sorghum, holding my palm to Flappy's mouth. We stared upwards. Waiting.

"No, no, no… Not today. Not without my starpiece. Not today."

Flappy made a noise, but I shushed him again and hunkered further down in the plants. Sharp, dry leaves crunched beside my ear. My tongue begged for another sip of water. The will o' the wisp eventually moved off southward, but Kalysta's burrow system had been further north. I'd witnessed too many Anti-Fairies run screaming from boomerangs to fall for the double-take trick, so I didn't shift position or draw my hand back from Flappy's mouth until she passed back a few minutes later. Then, when I was sure she'd gone, I took up our things again, and we moved onward.

Sweat. Bled. Down my face. My lips had been chapped for what must have been an hour and a half. Step. Upon step. After. Little. Step. When we next stopped, I removed my shoes and wriggled my toes in my socks. I couldn't go on like this, with my feet overheated and crushed up. My neat classy shoes weren't designed for walking long distances. But I couldn't leave them here. I took a bite of dry apple, then tossed it and the second one aside. They weren't worth keeping, and I needed the pocket space for my shoes and wallet and watch on its chain.

"You smell like a crate of those, all rotten," I told Flappy as I licked the insides of the latest water bottle. He scrunched up his nose like I'd offended him, but he couldn't sob much more than he already was. I'd tuned out the choking noise… forty-five minutes back? An hour and forty-five? There was a limit to the amount of problems I could manage. He wasn't one. Not anymore. Had he ever been? I couldn't remember that time. It didn't matter. Very little mattered. Pixie World couldn't be too much farther, terribly.

Perhaps H.P. would be waiting for me there, pacing back and forth at the bottom of the Bridge. Would he shout when he saw me stumble over the nearest hill, or would I shout to him first? What was the quickest way to deposit my load so I might run scampering to him? Could I wheedle physical touch from him too, our agreement never to hug notwithstanding? Just- just a pat on the head, or maybe on the shoulder- both shoulders, if I was lucky, him holding me out at arms' length, with warm eye contact, and he'd give the nod of 'Okay' and allow me to press my head against his chest and tell me he'd been worried that I'd been killed. I'd shiver from the entire embrace while he scratched me in that spot I liked most behind my left ear. Wouldn't he like to know all about how I'd ridden a horse! With a human, no less! And that I'd sat still and quiet and been passed over by a will o' the wisp! He'd give a little "Ha, ha," when I told of how I'd pried Ronald from his fairies, and be furious with Jorgen for kicking me aside like scum from the sewer, of course.

Flappy tugged on my sleeve. "Waddirk. Waddirk."

"There isn't much left," I told him, uncapping the second to last milk bottle. Water bottle. Soda bottle. Dust bottle. What was supposed to be in it, again? "Don't spill. Don't drink too much- Flappy, don't throw! Flappy Bob, no. You're very lucky you're low to the ground and this didn't hit a rock and break like that other one. We can't afford to lose any of it. I almost dropped those myself several times."

He put his fist in his mouth and sucked unhappily at a knuckle.

We were deeper in will o' the wisp country now, and I didn't much like the stormy clouds that were developing on the northern horizon. I clung to spots of cover when I could- fields of corn, winter wheat, more sorghum, deep trenches that might contain a trickle of sickly-smelling mud, even human farmhouses. After every step, I dropped something with a  _whoosh_  noise, and wasted precious minutes gathering everything together again. And again. What's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes: Again.

I licked my chapped lips. In this way, I'd never reach the Bit Bridge before it grew so dark that I risked stumbling into a rattlesnake. If I slept out here, the rattlesnakes might stumble into me, and the mosquitoes would croon sweet nothings to my skin as they tickled out my blood. And the wisps were out. But I couldn't just stop.  _I was so close_. Perhaps if I didn't have these supplies weighing me down, I could still make it.

With a half-relieved grunt, I tossed down everything I had and shifted my gaze back and forth between each piece. H.P. used to play a sort of game with us, when Hawkins, Wilcox, Longwood or myself complained about things we didn't have during the War of the Angels: He'd draw a triangle in the dirt with his pointer finger, then at each of the three points place something that we had all agreed we wanted. "All right," he'd say as the four of us crowded around. "Pick two." That was how he divided our rations, and we'd form alliances as we squabbled and backstabbed one another until we all slept with eyes open and didn't trust one another even for weeks after the war had ended. This one time, only Longwood had settled on broccoli while the rest of us split between bread and soup, and the Tuatha Dé Danann only knew how I had sucked up to him when our food ran out and even Robin struggled to sneak us more from the kitchens with his sticky fingers…

I hadn't known he'd taught us a life lesson, or that I'd be using it like this one day. As I studied my options, I ran my right thumb over the knuckles of my left hand, over and over and over. I had a flashlight. Bread. A whistle. A hat. A bottle and a half of water. And the baby. Pick two. Pick two. Pick two.

The flashlight I could afford to lose- if I abandoned supplies, I'd reach Pixie World before dark. If I didn't make it, then a single beam of light wouldn't reveal too many crevices and dangerous animals anyway.

The whistle was useless. Why did I still have that?

The hat wasn't worth keeping. It was much too big to stay on my head, and the wind always blew it off and forced me to backtrack for it. The burning sun had to taper off and cool  _sometime._

I didn't need the food. I'd been hungry before, and now I was a mere hour or so away from my destination. The water was more important. With empty arms, I could hold four bottles without the risk of dropping them, a fifth between my teeth, and a sixth in the waistband of my pants. That way, I could fill them if I ran across a source of water- I knew there was at least one stream coming up. That much I remembered about the area from the last time I'd popped down here, maybe seventeen to twenty years ago.

My fingers hesitated. Flappy was large, difficult to keep a grip on, a never-ending drain on my water, and… served no purpose, really. He didn't smell good, he constantly spit, and if he made too much more noise then the will o' the wisps might find us, just like Kalysta had caught H.P. back when he was toting little nymph Sanderson around with him. If I did run across one, I'd have to defend both myself and him. And he was so heavy, and his blanket made him so hot against my skin, and he yanked my hair and took my shades and jabbed his fingernails in my eyes…

Taking Flappy in my arms, I bent down to pick up the water bottles that I could. It turned out that holding a bottle in my teeth didn't work. They were too sore from biting my arms, or perhaps from clenching and jarring as I'd ridden the horse with Tam. The bottle in my waistband slipped, and slid down my legs to my feet after I'd only taken a few steps. The whole neck snapped off.

I looked at the little clown, with his inky black hair. I looked at the eastern horizon. I looked at the beating sun. I looked at my hands, and closed them into fists. Once upon a time, there had been past versions of Sandersons abandoned by their… their, er… well, their caretaker. In will o' the wisp burrows. On Yugopotamia. Battles. Prison cells. Anti-Fairy World. Cornfields. Fences. Dirt roads. Prairies. This same prairie, blanketed in snow and two hundred fifty thousand years in its past.

As difficult as it would make the journey, deep down in my soul, I knew what had to be done. This wasn't just about me. H.P. expected certain things of me, desired certain things of me. I had to prove that I could come through for him.

I divided my supplies in two piles: what I was leaving behind and what I was taking with me. Before going anywhere, I broke off some of my bread and gave it to Flappy, and let him drink as much water as he wanted, too. It would be the last meal until nightfall.

He exploded into that human defensive behavior again, with the cherry-faced sobbing, as I left him beneath the sagebrush clump with Tam's hat on his round human head.


	8. O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc.

_**O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc.:** Because _ Pixalchia pipientis  _can be transferred horizontally via contact with lifedust, and is incapable of surviving in the damseline reproductive system, no damsel of the Seelie Court is permitted to approach a pixie who appears to be injured or sick, and the Head Pixie and/or vice president of Pixies Incorporated is to be contacted immediately. Additionally, pixies must be kept in isolation within all medical care facilities. Any and all lifedust is to be gathered and disposed of by pixies alone. Killing a pixie [addit: additionally, and poaching [sic] lifedust] shall incur capital punishment. Neither the Head Pixie nor any employee of Pixies Incorporated will be held liable for any drakian reproductive system adjustments or internal combustion and subsequent death among damsels that may occur as a result of contracting the_ Pixalchia  _bacterium. The Fairy Council will compensate the O'Weskar, O'Terrae, Delaney, O'Brian, Niven, McLester, and O'Conner families._

* * *

I didn't drop any of the glass water bottles as the sky dipped into orange and I hurtled past fields of wheat and sorghum. For the first time in two days, I felt free. Free. Free! Free as a cherub! Free as air! Free as a… as a… simile thought up by someone far more creative than a pixie! What is it that the humans say? No shirt, no shoes, no service? The 'service' part I may not necessarily understand without the proper context, but with my shoes stuffed in my pockets, my muddy gray jacket flapping at my waist, my dark tie still around my forehead, my shades pushed up except for the occasional jerk they made to slap my nose, I could almost make myself believe that my right wing had healed from the bullet wound and I could fly again.

The - could we call it my second bout of "brief euphoric insanity"? - ebbed off fairly soon. My sprint drew into a trot, with the grass tickling the arches of my feet through my socks. Then I returned to walking at a crisp, pixie-esque pace. The sweat beneath my arms brushed against the side of my chest with every movement. The chronic water-sipping returned as Flappy Bob's young wails dissolved in the distance.

Once, in our younger years, we'd questioned H.P. about the official title he'd bestowed upon our home, seeing as at the time none of us spoke the language- None would learn a single cognate or conjugation until he caved and allowed yours truly to accompany him to law school while he obtained that degree he'd dropped out of getting before I'd been born. Anyway, he'd embedded the mysterious phrase into Pixie World's legal name, and when it was finally explained to us we all agreed that it was appropriate for our species and our history:  _Vivite vitam vestram et nihil paenite_. Live life. Regret nothing. The further I went, the less I regretted abandoning Flappy to the elements. He was only a human. They have shorter lifespans than even the Yugopotamians. And I was finally free of his sickly infant smell and inappropriately-grabbing tiny hands.

This- this delightful feeling that surged inside me… Was this, perhaps, that blood I shared with H.P. that coursed through every last pixie vein? That- that instinct, to just… to just…  _survive_. That ability to process. Study. Decide. Declare. Act. Eliminate. Manipulate. Thrive. I could feel it. My future wisdom. My future success. My future (Dare I speak the dream?) pixies of my very own, each one obedient and clever and exactly like me, mine to raise and train and groom as I wanted to. All rolled up in one pleasantly warm and fuzzy feeling in my soul. One… very, very warm… very warm…

"Kansas is so hot," I groaned between locked-together teeth. Dropping to my knees in the gray-green grass, I took a moment to drink a little more of my limited water and dip my tie-turned-headband again in the wetness. Rubbing circles on my thighs, I waited for it to drip against my pores and cool my system.

Kansas stayed hot. And, in the end, I cracked my eyelids open and took up my six glass bottles again - down to one and half a quarter's worth of water - and forced myself to forge onward across the prairie.

Unhappily soon, I understood why Tam had warned me about wearing long sleeves. The jacket had come off so long ago, but the collared shirt I'd simply assumed was meant to be left on. And yet…

The bottles clicked down against a patch of packed dirt. I unbuttoned my shirt and peeled it over my head. My plan was to leave it in the dust, but after I trudged a few more yards, I changed my mind and went back for it. Ensuring that clothes didn't end up getting touched by magic from sheep to shelf was expensive, and if I made it back to Pixie World, there was no reason to spend unnecessary money on a new one if it could be washed and mended.

When I folded it up and laid it over my arm, I lifted my gaze in time to catch a dogged flash of sprinting purple melt away behind a red boulder. Like a rabbit. I squinted. "Wilcox?"

No reply. I stood up. "Wilcox?"

Unquestionably. No other pixie - no other magical being, arguably - would spend a lazy evening down near the Earthen side of Pixie World allowing their energy and funds to drain away where he thought the Head Pixie wouldn't catch him. Not unless he had a fagigglyne addiction and was itching for his regular fix. Only one pixie, of all five hundred and six of us (Sorry - five hundred and four - sometimes even we forget) did. And he practically lived and breathed his rabbit form.

I abandoned my bottles and ran around the rock, shouting his full name of Mister Wilcox and begging for the physical touch of his forehead, my forehead, our foreheads, his shoulders, his cheeks, his twitching whiskers, his tall black ears- I would take anything that would prove he was real. One flick of his starpiece and I'd spring up to H.P.'s office. After a week of Nevada, of Utah, of Colorado, of Kansas, it was time for me to taste the kiss of home.

My eyes fell upon a golden-haired will o' the wisp who knelt in the dirt, with a cone-shaped damsel resting in her lap. Both wore yellow and green from crown to toe like the wheat, the grass, the sunshine. Both had brilliant butterfly wings sweeping cape-like towards their ankles, but the nymph's were bright scarlet tipped with magenta. The larger damsel's violet and black. She wore a short, mulberry-colored dress and a very familiar pale blue knit cap topped with a bright green pom-pom. Backpedaling mid-shout, I corrected my- my mistake and ducked back behind the rock. I did not pant. I did not twitch. I merely pressed myself flat, and stared skyward.

"I can see your hair sticking up, Sanderson. Last I checked, only four pixies have the double cowlick mark, and you're much too small to be any of the others."

Without coming around the other side, I leaned my head back against the stone and closed my eyes. "There are six of us, actually. Newman, Hamilton, and Faust are easy for any non-pixie to remember from their size, and I'm the world-renowned poster child, but it seems your people always forget that Iris licked Millburn's hair that time in the ninth-floor washroom and Canary tagged Saddler the first Krisday beneath the mistletoe down in Labby. He's still furious about it; you'd think it's all he could talk about sometimes. You ought to keep records. Contrary to popular belief, we're not all the same." I debated the question of if I should wrestle my shirt over my wings again. Whether sunset was approaching or not, it was too hot to make a decision. Perhaps too late, anyhow. Biting the tip of my tongue with sharp pixie teeth, I buried my face in the sweat-stained fabric. "Fancy running into you, Mrs. Idona. Whatever brings you up from your burrow at this time of year?"

"Rains are coming. You can smell the difference in the dirt. Mama makes sure we always stay out in the rains these days if it's not coming down too heavy, ever since the Fairy Elder 'forgot' to tell us and y'all about the Great Flood. But, I assume you already know all about that. Where's H.P.?"

I crossed my fingers. "Nearby. Several others too, their starpieces brimming with rosewater."

Holding the little wisp to her hip, she came around the rock. I edged away, dirty fingertips scraping, as her hounding eyes bore into my every point and facet. "Where's your wand?"

"We don't use those anymore.  _Sparkletail v. Whimsifinado_ , yadda yadda yadda. I have a pen."

"Not with you, I see." She studied my wing. "You can't fly either."

"Pixies are below you on the social ladder," I pointed out, taking two more steps back. "Even if the cross-species drake tax died in spite of the efforts of  _Ivorie v. Goldenglow_ , I'm not worth your time."

Idona braced her palm against the rock. "Will o' the wisps don't care about the bottom of the ladder, Sanderson. We're low on its rungs ourselves, even if we're not brownie-low. You and they may be the only ones under us. But…" Her tongue slipped across her lips. "Don't you still have half a fairy crown under that hat?"

"No- Idona, Idona, please. I'm only passing through. I have important business. I live here.  _Whimsifinado v. Caudwell_ \- I have to go back to Pixie World.  _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_ \- I'm a neutral party on Earth." I glanced down at my bruises and scrapes, then up again. " _O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc._ "

She clucked her tongue and said simply, "You're a lucky pixie tonight, Sanderson. You could traipse all over will o' the wisp country in that beaten condition, and none of us would dare stand within a quarter mile downwind for long. Your kind are natural misogynists, you know. One pinch of lifedust is all it would take to kick up a genocide, and we're still recovering from the Flood. What was the name of your martyr who trimmed down the leprechaun population? Mama says H.P. played the 'oopsie' card when he wrote his book."

Licking my lips myself, adjusting my flappy shirt in my arms, refusing to rise to the bait, I shifted my eyes to the little red-winged damsel. "You, erm, you finally got that daughter you wanted. Red, even. Red's desirable among your people, isn't it?"

She ran her fingers through the wisp's sunshine hair. "Mmhm. Took me a few thousand years, and now Kerani's four months next week."

"Congratulations," I said, reaching to adjust the tie that wasn't around my neck. My fingers twitched in empty air. "Normally in Pixies Inc. we say, 'Pleasure doing business with you' before we part ways with a client. However, seeing as there was no business nor client nor real interaction involved here tonight, I shall simply take my leave of you. Enjoy your rainstorm."

She set the nymph aside. "You're falling apart at the seams, Sanderson. Would you like some water and some shade? My burrow is only minutes north from here as the dragonfly skims."

A quick check through my memories turned up nothing that declared I was permitted to take up the offer. H.P. hadn't raised me to be lured into the cool underground like a sailor overboard to the sirens. I told her so and moved away. After a time, I even became brave and turned my back.

"You're going to get heatstroke if you stay out here."

"Not before I reach Pixie World." I pushed my squarish, wasp-like wings through the holes in my shirt one at a time. Not nearly so pretty as hers, even if mine were translucent and semi-lovely. "Earth's rotating. Sun's setting."

Idona took to her own black and violet wings and followed me in that silent way of will o' the wisps; buzzing was, evidently, unbecoming of them. "And that rain will be pitter-pattering down eventually."

"I walked through snowstorms in my nymphhood days."

"With the rain falling and the wind whipping, your magic lines might disconnect. You risk asphyxiating. That's not even including the possibility that lightning will set them sparking. Your Bridge's two cloudlengths off still. Suppose night falls before you go much farther. It gets chilly in Kansas."

"What part of 'chilly' was not included in 'snowstorms'?"

"I'm reaching. We both know I won't touch you when you're bleeding all over like this. Probably. I only fret because, as a mother myself, I'm concerned for your safety and state of mind." She sighed. "Remember when we were betrothed, Sanderson?"

I traced a square across my stomach. "Mmhm. I was promised to you because H.P. and I were your mother's prisoners and we weren't given a say in the matter. You and I had hardly four seasons of age between the two of us. Our nymph memories have long since rinsed away. Neither of us can confirm it even happened, except-"

"Except your Head Pixie wrote it down in his autobiography. So technically, there's proof and it's binding."

There was no reply to that.  _Technically_  it was (so I couldn't risk dragging her to court- no way she wouldn't whip out  _Epipole v. Fairy World_ ), even without a magical parchment or if we'd never acted upon it. Too young back then. Too spiteful in our adolescence. Too uninterested now, too busy, and particularly after H.P. had convinced the cherubs that we were incapable of reproducing in any way other than. Mates were unnecessary expenses. Marriage was pointless except for the tax benefits. The drake tax had died despite  _Ivorie v. Goldenglow_. There was literally no value in a union between us. And it wasn't as though I'd have real rights if I accepted. Not the way  _her_  kind ruled the underground that spread between humans on the surface and the Molpa-Pel deep in the core.

"Of course… I have blankets and plenty of room for you. You're not  _that_  close to death. There's at least one night of bright life left in there. Get a few full meals in you and you'll recover within the week."

That made me turn around, keeping expressionless even though nearly a full third of me would have enjoyed a good strong huff through my nose. "You can't lure me through fear. Don't think I forgot your venom sacs are drained now that it's not the season for will o' the wisps to be in heat- I know I have a fighting chance if you grab me. Pretty lashes and silky words may wrap Bayard or Hamilton or Longwood around your pinkie, but my shift doesn't end until 19:00. I have business to take care of. If I don't stop, I can make it; you said yourself that it's only a cloudlength before I come into official Pixie territory. If you're still tailing me when that happens, I'll press charges. After that, it won't be long before I can see H.P. again and sleep in my own bed with my own sheets and listen to Hawkins try and fail to suck his thumb and eat whatever I want for breakfast in the morning. Go kiss a brownie."

Idona's eyes had gone distant when I mentioned Longwood, but then they eased back into focus. As they did, I nodded once and began walking again. She said, "You know, most damsels wouldn't even kiss a pixie. I've met a few who claim you ought to be the lowest and the least desirable on the ladder. So, if you're telling me to kiss a brownie, what's wrong with kissing you instead?"

I flung out my hands. "I'm  _clearly busy_ , it will  _lead to nothing useful_ , and I  _am physically incapable of feeling affection towards you_. Why is that a question? There is literally no point. Forget the brownies- Maybe you should talk to Anti-Sanderson. He finds your counterpart entertaining enough, from the distance she keeps him at bay."

Apparently, I'd left my water bottles behind. Well. I adjusted my shades and tucked my hands beneath my armpits, then spun on one heel a second time. Idona drew up short, and it was actually she who pulled away upon realizing our faces had come so close. I was unflinching.

"Ask yourself this if you're still confused, Ivorie: Why would I ever want to spend any time around a being who isn't the Head Pixie? He raised me. He looks after all of us. He ensures the survival of the Pixie race. Simultaneously, he is my past and my future. I want to learn all that I can from him. He spared my life as a nymph after his first two attempts to drown me failed. He cared for me at his own expense when he could have abandoned me to die. I am eternally indebted to him because of that."

Idona raised her eyebrows. "I'm gonna take a wild stab and guess you still parrot that like scripture these days, don't you?"

"It's scrawled across a plaque on every floor of every building. It's the Pixie way of life. But it's the words, Idona- the words!" I almost stopped walking again, just to lift my shoulders and release them. "Even if I didn't read them twenty times a day for tens of thousands of years, it wouldn't make them untrue. H.P. is my Earth and my cloudlands. He's my sun and my sky. He's my knowledge and my physical world. He's my magic and my wings. No one could ask for a more calculating, more efficient, more clever boss than he. He's my entire universe. And I want to be exactly like him one day soon." Gesturing to my outer self, I stumbled to the end with, "I've already come this far. It's mostly just his mannerisms and his cleverness that I'm left to pin down."

"I suppose you have," Idona agreed, sizing me up. "Well, back to my needs, what about one of your coworkers? All y'all are identical; I can settle for one of them. I'm not as stuck-up and picky as I was during my younger days, or so I like to imagine, when only you were worth my time. That wasn't my best idea, trying to fawn over you all day when y'all had your jobs to do. And you kissed like you taught yourself the whole careful process from an instruction manual."

"I  _did_. Most everything H.P. doesn't teach us, we read manuals on like that, or Wilcox tells us from what he learned in school. It isn't as though these things come by instinct to us. We don't fall in love. Mates are unnecessary. Marriage is pointless. Also, you jumped me. I wasn't prepared. If you'd approached that stairwell kiss the Pixie way, every piece of it outlined and scheduled and discussed beforehand, I'd have done it better than Longwood. Very easily. Should I have wanted to. Which I didn't. Because you slammed me into the wall and lost control of your paralyzing venom. Bad execution. Very unprofessional. Totally beneath me. I've been groomed to be the best at everything, Pixie prince and all."

"I didn't mean to let the Kiss of Frost slip. The Head Pixie and my mom made me panic."

I curled my lip. " _And_  you stole my wand while you had me pinned and forced us to throw all magic in the company on lock-down. You and the rest of your people wreaked chaos. Pixies dropped like fruit flies and some of them didn't wake up for days."

"Yes, well. Admittedly not my finest hour. I was going through a phase." She twitched her small pointed nose, then rubbed it. "I oughta be getting back now to Kerani. Come visit if you change your mind about the smooching- Just straight-up call me a pixie-kisser through and through. I embrace it. Good Bridges make good neighbors, and I see y'all come romping and flitting down here every other week. What can I say? Squares are my favorite shape."

I tossed all the icy acid into my voice when I said, "If you really do want kisses, schedule an appointment with Vice President Longwood. He might be able to squeeze you in. He always seems to find the time, and more often than not it's on work hours."

"Nah. I get awful flashbacks. Well, I'm nuts and moonshine, I'm sure, for not holding you to my lips while I have the chance. But my mama only wants all y'all to be happy, and she'll really chew my ear if I show up at the hatch with you kicking and squirming. Or she won't. You've got the Ivorie brand in your hair, after all. Maybe next time. Have a nice walk." Idona shrugged and darted away with some comment that she wanted to show her daughter a patch of soil soft for digging in, and earthworms to play with. I went on alone. After a few minutes of it, of spitting on my palms and rubbing the saliva along my sliced arms to chase away the dirt, I turned back a second time. "Idona?"

Whispering trails of wind. I took another step. "Idona?"

One lone pixie on a hilltop. Two hands scratching at the buttons that dabbed his limp white shirt. Three teeth chewing on his cheek.

"Idona, I didn't mean what I said, about pressing charges. You're welcome to accompany me to the Bridge. I could use someone to talk to, to help me watch for snakes and spiders. Come back!"

Nothing. After gritting my teeth and cursing myself for my own inabilities, I yelled one more time for her return. My feet started back in that direction. My head eventually set them on the correct course again. Almost there. Almost there.

Since Idona refused the offer, I held intelligent conversation with myself. Mostly relating to my lack of water. Where was that stream? Wasn't there supposed to be a stream? Perhaps it had dried over the summer. Maybe I'd see it once the rains came on.

There were rhymes. I made them. My only annoyance of belonging to a race called Pixies was the fact that 'Pixies' didn't rhyme with much. My personal favorite was 'Fix these', but it loses luster with overuse.

Okay, where was that stream? Had I strayed too far north?

The sunlight drained in the deliberately pretty way it liked best, first from the bottoms of each hill and rise and then from the top. After some consideration, I squirmed from my shirt again. The fabric was still stuffy and damp, and not wearing it allowed me to display the marks that hopefully would make the will o' the wisp damsels recall  _O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc._  and think twice or thrice about bothering with me out of season. I spotted one with pale pink and white wings, but she kept her distance and our paths crossed from yards away.

Had I gone too far? Perhaps I ought to double back.

Puffing, I hauled myself onto a tall stone and placed my hands on my waist. Hmm. This area looked familiar, but not that familiar.

I still didn't run across the stream when I tilted my direction southward, so after following that trail for about ten or fifteen (Who cares about details anyway?) minutes, I wandered back.

Or, I tried to wander back. In a twist of fate that didn't come as a shocker to me, I managed to lose myself in a random field of drying flowers along the way. It was much easier to march through them than go around. Eh. Littering's a crime as far as I'm concerned and humans shouldn't be sticking stuff all over our territory.

No rabbits. I stuck out my lower lip. I wanted to see real rabbits in the flower field. Why weren't there rabbits? Shouldn't they be here and allowed to feast on clover and blossoms like in "Banjo"? They deserved to enjoy themselves too. Didn't they? Rabbits are just people, same as us. Sometimes they talk to you, if you listen. I couldn't listen today, though. There were no rabbits for me.

I met the Easter Bunny once. The Easter Bunny doesn't have to pay taxes and the Fairies forgot to tell us that until after we humiliated ourselves in chasing him. And he always had this thing about leaving us baskets of chocolate. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate. Everything chocolate.

Pixies like vanilla ice cream, though. When Wilcox was still mostly a nymph, Hawkins and I made vanilla ice cream every week with China. It was very good, but sometimes she added rainbow sprinkles and that made it weird.

Water. Please, water.

I'm not vice president because of China. The position was Longwood's by birth, even though he was the fourth of us. Pixies Inc. didn't even exist back then. We didn't even call ourselves the Pixies back then. But there are rules, and because of China, we always knew Longwood was going to inherit stuff. We used to snark at him that he was made in China. But it stings too much now.

I've slept with H.P. Lots of times. He always used to let me sleep with him before Longwood was born. Only on weekends, but it was every weekend, so it was okay. I'd wiggle into my pajamas that fit just right and I'd crawl into that big white bed, and even though he refused to lay his wing across me like he did when we slept in Kalysta's burrow with her other drakes, I'd hug my pillow and we'd drift off around the same time. Except I always stayed up longest so that when I knew he was asleep, I could squirm under his limp arm for a snuggle. Then I had to make sure I woke up before he did so I could sneak away before he found out. But in the years before Longwood was born, I wasn't allowed to at all. After a few centuries, I stopped expecting it like I'd stopped expecting him to give me baths and cut my pancakes and help me stuff my wings through the holes in the backs of all my shirts, and that was fine.

We always fought over who slept with the boss. When we were older, Longwood whined for comfort during the War of the Angels because all the wrestling and snapping teeth and bright beams of magic made him want to go pacifist. He stole my blanket and begged for cuddles to chase the nightmares away. H.P. wouldn't let either of us sleep with him because the bunks were too small. Even on weekends.

That's what he says, but it was because Longwood had no tact. He showed emotion. He was to be punished. And then we got older again, and someone spread a story about how Longwood got to be vice president, and someone spread a story about why I was the only one to ever accompany H.P. beyond Pixie World.

Longwood moved on to his damsels and people backed off, but I was too dumb back then to realize what he was doing, and even when I tried to spare H.P. from the rumors by flirting with damsels too, I got blanked. You don't kiss above you on the social ladder unless someone reaches down to you first. And H.P. took me by the back of the collar and stopped me from hunting down the brownies. Good. Because I would have done it.

So they forgot Longwood, but no one ever forgot to taunt me. "Sanderson's 'friend'", the Fairy media liked to claim. As if they thought I needed friends. Peh. Not so long as I had H.P. My relationship with him was something deeper than regular friendship. It was something deeper than regular fath… Er, paternal connections. He had absolute trust in me to keep watch while he slept and defend his back if it came down to a fight. He let me handle his money and even his starpiece and he ran all his plans through me first. Show me many… drakes who trust their… drakian… offspring in the same way the boss trusts me. You can't.

I loved being treated as a drone in his company because he never threw me out to go to school or to find a mate and he was going to let me stay and work for him forever and ever and ever. My life was perfect and I wouldn't ask for it to be any other way.

Except I'd like to find that smoofing  _stream_.

Just when I was considering angling my course even further south, I caught a glimmer against the approaching rain clouds and twilight sky. A purple dash glinted like a scar.

First I pursed my lips. But… it was  _it_! The Bridge to my Sprigganhame! My wings flicked up. H.P. wasn't pacing there awaiting me, but I stopped caring after the first few wingbeats. The aches melted from my arms. I may have shouted once, and I took off in a sprint with my tie flapping around my ears. I made it only part of the way before I had to stop and rest my feet and regret the abandoning of my water bottles again, but the next time my pace slowed, I found myself standing at its base. Mushroom Rock, big and balanced on a point, lay a few dozen feet to my right.

I drew in a gulp of unneeded air. My shoulders squared of their own accord. As much as pixies could square any squarer, that is. All of a sudden, it didn't matter that I still looked entirely unprofessional. Five stripes in tints and shades of glowing purple from orchid to mauve arced upwards into the sky. I was  _home_.

I'd only climbed the Bit Bridge on  _foot_  once in my life, when H.P. returned from the hospital where the Fairy Elder had carried him after he'd scalded his hands and cheek to the bones with raw magic (He still had those scars, actually- the one trait besides the notches near the pterostigmata in his wings that I might never share). The slope was steep enough to slide down on a plastic tray from the food court (which Bayard and Michaels did once and spent a month on laundry duty with Rosencrantz for it), yet stable enough that it held my weight as I scrambled up, useless wings fluttering, and wriggled above the cloudline.

Glorious, sweet, open sky! I made the attempt to bundle it all in my arms as I spun in a circle. My blind foot stomped on the fingers of one pixie on his knees, setting out purple, square flower pots of daisies beside the crisp Pixies Inc. billboard and angling them precisely. The only pixie who ever bothered to, since it was literally what he'd been born and bred to do, and it showed in the name H.P. had given him.

"Jardine!"

His face went blanker as he drew back his injured hand. "Sanderson? What happened to your shirt?"

"I'll put it on later. First-" I snatched him up and tried to spin him around in the air. That did not work. Us being genetically identical rendered us about the same size (I am  _not_  shorter!), and we crashed together in the road. Jardine pulled away, cuddling one of the flower pots to his chest. His lavender eyes darted behind tinted lenses.

"We, uh… we probably shouldn't let anyone catch us in the act of, erm… What do you call it?"

"Hugging?"

"Yes, that. It's too… fun." He removed his shades and squinted. Then, with a shrug, he set his wings buzzing again. "Tensions are thick with the Las Vegas incident burning in everybody's minds. Caudwell's still blowing off steam somewhere- thought it would go through and finally be his ticket out of here. What took you so long to get back? Where is your starpiece?"

"We'll have story time later." I rolled to my feet and searched the blocky, scattered clouds for my dirty shirt. "Did H.P. make it back?"

"He's in his office."

"Is he? For long?"

Shrug. "I was about to head up there myself with the daisies." His eyes drifted towards the Bridge, then to me again. "When I was down there fetching dirt, it looked as though it were going to rain soon. I hope we don't get infested with will o' the wisps again; Hirschi broke the lock to our apartment. Would you like me to  _ping_  you with?"

"Please do. I'll pay you back tomorrow."

Jardine withdrew his pen from the inner pocket of his suit coat, but frowned at my bare, bruised chest. "You may wish to dress yourself first. I don't think H.P. would much like it if you showed up in there unpresentable like that."

"Of course." First the shirt. Then the tie. I flapped some of the dust from my jacket before pulling it over my shoulders. Licking my palm, I ran it through my hair so my cowlick stood a little taller. That was better. Jardine stuck his thumb in his mouth, then brought it to my cheek and swiped off a chunk of dirt. At my nod, he made a writing motion with his pen, ended it with a flick, and we  _ping_ ed to floor eighteen of the Headquarters building.

" _Ohh_ ," I sighed, staggering backwards against Madigan's secretary desk.

"Is something wrong?"

"Not a thing. It's been days since I felt the magic particles in my blood light up with clean, pure pixie magic. Feels like a week. I could drink it for an hour straight right now."

Jardine nodded as if he understood, though he didn't, really. I scooted past him to half-drown myself in the water cooler (Ha, ha- That was a joke, you see), and together we waited until Madigan slowed his typewriter clacking and glanced up.

"Madigan, Boss wanted me to bring him more of his things." Jardine lifted the flower pot. "It's going to rain and will o' the wisps are out. Gotta be presentable and stuff."

"Eh, let's hope they don't come. Rosencrantz fell asleep on sentry duty back in March and Delaina slipped straight past him and got me with the longest Kiss of Frost I've ever had to take over by the central fountain (ID tags, please? Yes, these check out). Left me paralyzed from Thursday to Tuesday. Thankfully Longwood showed up and distracted her before she could carry me back to the Bridge." Finished with his typing, Madigan took off his shades and replaced them with his glasses. He studied us both, one brow high, and as was proper policy flipped the switch that briefly diverted the energy field away from the room.

All at once I was two hundred thousand years of dizzy and sore, and found myself attempting to draw magic through my mouth rather than my limp and severed lines. Jardine's wings buzzed out of instinct, but he dropped to the floor regardless. Every magically-formed item dissolved, as did the curls Jardine liked to put at the front of his hair. No disguises. We were the real deal.

Then the field was allowed to sweep over us again. Changing the glasses back for the shades, Madigan placed his fingertips on the metal bar beside the intercom on his desk. "H.P., Jardine and Sanderson are here to see you."

"Are they?" he answered mildly through the speaker. "Curious. Send them in."

A tremor started in my heels. I could have melted. He was  _here_. He really had made it back in the flesh! Madigan released the bar. As he returned to the typewriter, one hand flicked towards the solid white door. I took the handle and held it open for Jardine. He gave me one last sideways glance for encouragement, then ducked in. The square pot of daisies went down on the edge of H.P.'s desk, near his tall purple swivel chair, before Jardine slipped into the hallway once again. I let the door fall shut behind him and waited for H.P. to finish writing.

He was in far better condition than the last time I'd seen him. His cap had straightened back into a point. His suit was free of wrinkles. The bandage on his forehead had long since shriveled up and fallen away to reveal not a scratch. Bumps and bruises remained on his face, along with the exposed cuts on his cheek and neck, but another restful night would likely be enough to take care of those. A thin whine tickled the back of my throat until he'd come to the end of his paper. Licking his finger, he flipped to the next page of whatever it was he was working on and glanced up.

"Sanderson," he said, pleasantly surprised. "I see you managed to return to Pixie World in a single piece. Well." He studied my cut shoulder, exposed by some gap in the sleeve I'd never noticed, then made a motion with his finger for me to turn around. "Nearly in one piece."

I bounced on my toes, waiting for him to summon me to his side for my usual bedtime pat on the head before I headed off to my room for the long night without him. When he said nothing more, I pushed my shades closer to my eyes and faced him again. "How long have you been in Pixie World, sir?"

He plucked up the small clock on his desk. "Let me think. I was here all Saturday. I drove on Friday until it grew dark. I imagine I reached the Bridge around 17:30 that night. Then I had Longwood organize a search party for you. They've been searching Jetmore ever since."

"Longwood?"

"Yes, though they did not alert me that they'd located you. I was beginning to wonder if the will o' the wisps had dragged you underground after all. It's likely to rain by morning, Caudwell tells me, and they prefer to be out in it to reassure themselves there won't be another Great Flood to wipe out seventy-five percent of their entire species. They can't swim, if you remember that…"

"What about Flappy?"

"The humans took him from the car while we were each occupied with the effects of Anti-Naelita's black cat hex, and I couldn't sneak him back. Madigan pops in on their farmhouse every several minutes to scan the perimeter, and I'm at this very moment working on an outline for how we may retrieve him. We can't simply launch a direct attack, or the Fairy Council might consider that an antagonistic action and press charges, as they would not violate  _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_  in doing so. Possibly we could offer the humans a bribe, but I'm concerned that they might attempt to shoot at us, seeing as they already did catch you and hunt for me while we were there. Sending a fairy wouldn't necessarily work, as they might turn on us regardless of any money we promised-"

"I spoke to one of the humans, sir. The damsel - Tam - she brought Flappy to me and allowed me to go. She feared he'd been kidnapped and did not want to get involved, and she thought we were taking him to a place of safety."

"Oh, did she? That solves everything, then. Where did you put him?"

I rubbed my left knuckles with my right hand. "I… I had to leave him behind, sir. When I was halfway through the grasslands. I had to make sacrifices in order to keep going."

H.P. paused, his pen hovering like a fairy over his page. He looked up again and at last made eye contact with a rush of warm pins and needles. "You left Flappy Bob in open Kansas regardless of whether the coyotes and the scorpions and the wisps and whatever else might come across him in your absence?"

"Yes, sir. I had to, sir, or I wasn't likely to make it back myself before the wisps or the rains got me. Sir. Those clouds were awfully dark and heavy by the time I reached the Bridge and, if the will o' the wisps watched me lose my footing on the way up and slide back down like we often watch them do, I wonder if they might have pursued me and claimed me simply for entertainment. I imagine Idona still believes she's entitled to."

H.P. clicked his pen into the wire cup on his desk and beckoned me closer. I circled around to his side, almost tripping over my own toes. My fingertips tapped along the unfailingly sharp lip of his desk. Both wings peeled themselves from my sweaty back and took to fluttering. Without moving from his chair, H.P. reached up and leaned his dry palm against my cheek. I placed my younger, softer, but genetically identical hand over it and drank its warm brush through a coffee straw- the shining silver hairs waving on every knuckle, the chipped fingernails speckled with blue ink droplets and smelling of newspaper and orange-cinnamon muffin crumbs, the way each crease and wrinkle and scar molded to my skin like they were intended to lie there and no other place, the way the freckled liver spots were as if by some magic I'd never learned perceptible to eyes alone and not to feel. My hands were destined to be precisely like this someday, my hair just as white and feathery.  _I wanted it._

The familiar floating sensation settled beneath my stomach and drew me, without a starpiece, nearly an entire inch into the air. My eyelids flickered shut. I nibbled several times on my lower lip, no longer making the effort to keep the quickening from my wings. As they started to rub and chirp, the Head Pixie's fingers inched up behind my neck, where my dirty hair swirled in faint curls that had once graced his own head. There he held me rooted - his loyal firstborn, his favorite protégé, his flawless replica, his crown prince, his perfect  _son_  - as my fingers tugged down the ends of my sleeves. Nearly of its own accord, my tongue dabbed at the inside of either cheek as he tightened his grip. I'd long missed those days when I was small enough that he could hoist me up by the nape of my neck, when it was undeniably obvious that I was his nymph, that I  _belonged_  to him, and it was entirely acceptable in my young mind for me (if behind his back) to refer to him as my-

My nose slammed into the edge of the desk. Against every instinct howling for me to touch the stinging spot between my eyes, I calculated the situation and rerouted all energy into keeping my face expressionless. At most, my eyebrows moved upwards a millimeter. A millimeter is far too much in Pixies Inc.

"Sir?"

H.P. withdrew his hand from behind my head. He shook it once as though it were sore, or soiled. "I'll be docking your paycheck before the first of October, Sanderson. If you should ever come into possession of some item that I have informed you will be useful to me, and that I hope to use to propel an upcoming thirty-seven-year plan, I want it brought back to me and not tossed aside like a pencil worn to the stub. Wheedling another human baby away from its parents may not be easily done. You've ruined everything again."

Still low and clinging to his desk, "But I did the right thing! I put the survival of the Pixie race before all else!"

H.P. opened his mouth. It stayed open for several wingbeats. A gnat could have flown through one fuzzy ear canal and crawled up the other, perhaps, without him stirring. He shut his lips again. "Did it occur to you, perhaps, to wonder what  _I_  would have done in your position?"

I narrowed my eyes. "You've abandoned me in the snow before, sir. Twice. Once to spare yourself from the will o' the wisps. Once to spare yourself from the blizzard."

"That's…" H.P. removed his glasses and massaged his nose. "That's entirely different. He's a human, and you're a pixie. Can you define the divergence?"

"His words call upon the power of the universe whereas I am a drone, unskilled and replaceable."

"Precisely. Humans are imaginative. Have been since the days we actively referred to them as the Angels. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain, they forge deep bonds with those who simply are around them, to the point where they form actual emotional connections. This - you know I disapprove of the word, but we'll call it that - 'love' is how the humans express their magic. When a human acknowledges and expresses a true desire, what can we, and all the Seelie Court, do with it?"

"Springboard off their magic with our own to call upon and then channel the higher powers that our ancestors the Aos Sí once held in the days of the Great Dawn, sir. We briefly achieve the second level of ability and thus the opportunity to dramatically alter the lower reality."

He inclined his head. "Humans, and in particular their wishes, are a valuable commodity. Don't forget that." Then he rose to his wings. "We had best go and retrieve Flappy Bob."

My wings thrummed back into action. "You're coming with me?"

"Of course I'm coming. Evidently, I can't trust you to manage the simplest of tasks on your own."

"I don't make mistakes on purpose, sir," I told him, sprinkling as much innocence into my voice as I could possibly manage without breaking out of monotone.

"You don't make many mistakes in general," he grunted. "That's why I allow you to accompany me anywhere at all."

Of course I didn't. If there was one thing I understood better than any other pixie, it was tact.

"Sanderson," H.P. called as I opened the door for him. I pushed my eyebrows together, and he moved his finger up and down to indicate my upper body. "Shirt. Tie. Jacket. Shoes. Missing sock. Everything is dirty and you've bled over every bit of it."

"Yes, sir. Should I retrieve my backup starpiece from my office?"

"No, I'd prefer not to wait around for you to grab it and have it unlocked and synced and registered. Do that on your own time. I'll  _ping_  you up to standards myself." He did, with magic softer and more organized and not nearly as stiflingly hot as the stuff the Fairies pulled out out of the air. Clean clothes. Straight hat. Smudgeless shades. Purple sparkles ran along my arms and face, doing the best they could without a night of rest. I'd nearly forgotten about my chipped front tooth. "But this comes out of next month's paycheck. Was he far from the Bridge?"

"Two and a half cloudlengths west, roundabout."

Shaking his hand in an exasperated fashion that drove an invisible javelin through my stomach, H.P. reached behind him to his desk and lay his hand on his intercom's metal bar. "Madigan, have Monroe send me the coordinates of Longwood's active starpiece."

After about twenty wingbeats, a scrap of paper  _ping_ ed into the wire basket at the edge of H.P.'s desk, beside the daisies. He picked it up, paused, removed his glasses, stared a little longer, and then passed the note to me. "What do you make of this, Sanderson?"

When I read the location, I almost chuckled aloud. Forcing myself to smother my rising mirth, I said, "That looks to me like his starpiece is in the Ivory Wand & Comet Blood soda bar, sir."

"That is what I thought. Fair enough, then. We'll be making a quick detour to the Oklahoma skies. But I would prefer to move fast, so-"

_Ping!_


	9. Ivorie v. Goldenglow

_**Ivorie v. Goldenglow:** Concerning the hot debate of the tax on drakes kept by will o' the wisp damsels, the Fairy Council ruled in favor of Goldenglow by citing _ Epipole v. Fairy World _\- that a wisp keeping drakes for her harem qualifies as natural, biological behavioral instinct and is to not to be imposed upon by political law. The tax tied into non-wisp drakes shall be dropped entirely, in addition to the one placed upon each post-instar drake after four._

* * *

I was a simple being with simple wants. If I had a warm bed, some music to sing, and I was permitted to spend my days dogging H.P.'s heels, then I was about the chirpiest little pixie you might run across. In a completely poker-faced way, of course. And, I enjoyed being around to see H.P.'s temples throb and his jaw work as he tested each word in his brain before he blanketed it with his voice. Seeing him furious just reminded me that he was… normal. If he'd originated from a similar humble state to mine and risen into such a lofty position, then I possibly could too someday. He was permitted the occasional slip-up without losing his godly status in my mind. In a strange way, it only made him greater.

Above the Oklahoma skies along the outskirts of some cloudland town whose name I could never remember, possibly because it seemed to change by mayor every few years, we gathered our particles together outside the open double doors of Ivory Wand & Comet Blood. Casually cheery and vaguely flirtatious voices, the soft beat of music like a tapping finger, and the cool scents of sugary sweetness spilled into the road. We owned the place, or half of it (we reaped the most tax benefits that way), and they even had a little sign hung in the window to announce it. Of course we had a cute little soda bar of our own called The Anthill back in Pixie World, but somehow it's more amusing to rub the fact that we're practically guests of honor in this corner of Fairy World into everybody's pinched little faces.

They didn't bother to ID me as the two of us came in. Even if I had been underage for processed sugar consumption en mass, so long as the Head Pixie was here I was allowed anything my little pale tongue desired. Even the Mountain Dew. Maybe I'd snag a Fun Dip to go at while I kicked back and watched him tear Longwood to shreds for shirking his vice president duties.

One pixie - I think McAdams - was taking his shift behind the counter, scribbling orders and counting precise change, while a selkie stacked sodaglasses in a tower behind him. A nervous imp damsel brought out the requested drinks and blushed to the stalks of her antennae each time a drake so much as smiled her way. Then she didn't know how to react when I studied her in typical disinterested pixie fashion. McAdams evidently sensed us as we trailed past the barstools, and the point snapped off his pencil. His eyes shot to his right before they landed on H.P. again.

No surprise that Longwood's search party had chosen to crowd around a table over there. The entrance to the bar was covered in pretty Fairy niceties, whereas the far side carried much less impressive decor. The building was split down the middle, with aching color splashed up front so you could get it out of the way while pleasant dull gray paint and paintings of rural Kansas and golf courses trailed all along the opposite wall. That was where we found the eight of them, perched on their hovering chairs, aimlessly chatting and sipping sodas while they stripped so many candy bars naked, it'd make a mother shield her nymph's mouth and zip hastily off.

A hush fell over the bar as we floated and/or walked towards them. Not the whole place, mind, but voices here and there began to drop like popcorn as nosy curiosity set in. H.P. raised his hand above his head and snapped his fingers, twice. Every pixie had had the double snap command ingrained in his mind since breaking out of his Terrible Twos or so. Instantly, all of them were out of their chairs and whirring their wings. Faust knocked the entire table sideways in the process with his large body and awkward limbs. No pixie really flinched or turned around when glasses crashed five feet below, but a couple of eyebrows lifted by a hair. Splinters flew and liquid soaked in puddles between the hairline tile grout. A few more voices died behind me, with the exceptions being several particularly loud tables in the air to the left, where the two clashing gray and rainbow designs met in the bar's middle.

H.P. folded his arms. "Where is Longwood?"

The pixies exchanged uncertain glances behind their shades. Still fighting a valiant battle to contain my mirth at the thought of Longwood receiving his long-overdue chewing-out, I studied each face with care. I was impressed. It took a certain skill to organize a search party this distractible and useless. Throwing Wolfram, Kaufman, Matheson, Carmichael, and Cinna - the five most stubborn, ambitious pixies there had ever been - together, and then bringing tactless Bayard, clumsy Faust, and timid little Rosencrantz? Not our beloved vice president's wisest idea if he were going to feign innocence to the boss's face.

"Where is Longwood?" H.P. repeated, this time bringing out the snapping fingers again. "I have proof that his starpiece is here, and none of you is as good as you think you are at hiding your guilt."

As one, they raised their fingers towards the restrooms, tucked in a tunnel behind the soda bar itself. Ignoring McAdams's cautious greeting, H.P. stormed past the counter with whipping wings, bristled down the corridor, and shoved the door open with his shiny black shoe. To my crushing disappointment, we were too late to catch Longwood red-handed. Figuratively, at least- the rapid friction was wearing at them as he pressed his thin stomach to the sink, studying his own face in the mirror. His wings were hidden beneath his suit. He turned his head as we came in. The small star on the end of his cap let out a faint jingling noise.

"Sir," he said, ducking his head. "Sanderson." I didn't get a nod. "I see you've been reunited. You look frustrated, boss. What would you like me to do to help?"

My eyes narrowed. H.P. set one fist to his hip. "Who else is here? You know you aren't permitted to go anywhere beyond the boundaries of Pixie World without a constant companion. A  _pixie_  companion."

With a scattered purple  _ping_ , Wilcox materialized a foot away. "I was with him, sir. I was a literal fly on the wall."

My eyes narrowed a shred further. Clever. Very clever. There never was any way to  _know_  what went on in Wilcox's mind or why he chose this or that form to take while satisfying his fagigglyne addiction. He was always open for suggestions. Why not a fly, Longwood might have said. No one minds making a drooling fool of himself in front of a fly.

"You're tingle-fritzy," was H.P.'s next attempt at drawing a confession. He made a motion with his other hand to indicate the way the surrounding magical field bristled with soft static electricity. When I mentally stretched out and allowed my eyes to slip into that same field, I saw for myself that he was precisely that. Clouds centered themselves around all magical beings, and Longwood's glowed with neutral purple. All scattered, like he'd recently lost control of his thoughts or emotions. And quite possibly his lips. I could count all nineteen violet magic lines waving lazily above his head, hooked into the core of his soul to keep both him and the Anti-Longwood from asphyxiating due to lack of magic flowing to the brain. Three lines planted in him by H.P. at birth. One more for each eleven millennia he had been alive.

Six cords were missing, having been awkwardly shoved into the twins when the double dose of magic drainage had knocked H.P. out of commission. Longwood had hesitated because the sight of blood and forehead chamber guts and nymph-goop made him weaker at the knees than any pretty damsel ever could. Both had almost turned to dust in his arms. It'd taken him six minutes just to put his mouth on their amniotic sacs and bite. Eight more to tie down Mullins with his clumsy-ox fingers. Tolbert was even further gone, and the unhealthiest one of all of us even now; identical in every other way, you could always tell the two apart by his near-chronic panting. I'd have saved them both in forty-five seconds or your money back. I knew how. Had since I was thirty-thousand.

"It's the soda, sir. I had a little much of it and a few too many M&Ms, and did order a glass of water before Wilcox and I came in here for a restroom break. If you should like to, you're welcome to see for yourself. I left it on the table." He tilted his head. "Although, I did hear a rustle of movement and Faust apologizing for smashing something. I take it the table flipped over?"

I could no longer see anything, my eyes were so narrow.

"Why are you wearing that ridiculously fluffy coat? It doesn't have slots for your wings."

"It's waterproof and it was going to rain, sir. It helps to keep my magic lines stable."

H.P. unclicked his starpiece and swiped a beam of white up and down Longwood's form. The scan brought up the number 96 before dissipating like mist. "There's four percent selkie splashed over all the magic in your system. Thematic chart says your lips and hands are especially thick with it. Explanation."

"A selkie barmaid handled my soda and my candy before I tore off the wrappers. I have traces of her magic all over my fingers and then got my fingers all over my face, the candy itself, and my mouth, sir. I said as much to Wolfram before I started eating; you can ask. I hope you recognize that I know I have a job to do, H.P., and wouldn't sneak smooches on work hours, if that's what this is about."

'Anymore', he meant. He'd gotten a pretty fierce wing-twisting a decade ago.

"Longwood, do you know where Jetmore is?"

"Midwestern Kansas, sir."

"Then why are you here? I asked you to organize a search party and hunt for Sanderson in that area."

He pushed the bridge of his shades up with his pinky. I didn't miss the sweat glistening on his brow and along his palm. "It's sunset, H.P. Our party has been scouting for the last two days with hardly half an hour of sleep each, and with morale fading, I thought we might take a break to boost everyone's spirits. We didn't want to quit our search for lunch, as we thought Sanderson might still be on the move then and we couldn't risk missing him. However, with evening coming on, we thought he might stop and bed down in a hidden location, away from wisp or human eyes. We couldn't split up- Even out of season, will o' the wisp territory isn't safe for drakes to travel alone, and particularly with the rains coming on. We were all growing sleepy and I calculated that we may not last another night awake. Not without a sugar boost. Regulated, mind you. No one sugared themselves under the table. Faust only eats grilled cheese here anyway. The plan was to head out again and bring our search a little nearer the Bridge, but I can see for myself that will no longer be necessary."

After a short stare-down, H.P. relented with a nod. "That lines up. You have my apology for leaping to conclusions. However, if you're finished here, then with you being company vice president I would rather you returned to Pixie World as soon as possible while I'm away from it. You may as well take the others when you go, if they really are that tired. Ensure they get off to bed."

Back by the table, and behind H.P.'s semicircle of sight, Longwood tilted his nose up at me an entire wing's breadth. I fumed in expressionless silence as he and the rest of the ex-search party gathered together their dropped chocolates, paid their bill, and  _ping_ ed back to Headquarters.

"That's Naelita's coat he's wearing under his shirt again, sir," I stated, teeth grinding. "You can tell it by the bulge around his collar and how you can only see the very tips of his flattened wings dangling beneath it."

"So long as he still follows dress code on his outermost layers, he's allowed to, Sanderson." H.P. leaned his arm against the soda bar. "Has everything been going well since you punched in, McAdams?"

"Yes, sir."

"H.P., why would he wear  _a selkie's sealskin_  knowing he'd be  _unable to fly_  during a  _missing pixie recovery operation_  in the middle of  _will o' the wisp country_  when  _they surface in the rain_? Sir, the restroom reeked of her seaweed and salt magic. He was tingle-fritzy. You ought to check the memory chip in his starpiece."

"That is my policy, and I intend to. However, I did notice that he left his pen on the table while he was in there, so I'm doubtful it will contain any incriminating evidence against him. He's meticulously efficient about hiding his tracks these days, even when he isn't expecting to be called out. It's one reason he'll make a fine Head Pixie should he ever have to don my cap."

"You don't actually believe he went in there just to use it for its intended purpose, do you, sir?"

H.P. turned his head, eyes dull and uninterested, and not necessarily in the pleasant way. "If I'm impressed enough with your ability to draw together a cover story, or if there's not enough solid evidence that I could in theory take one of you to court on it and win with no real effort on my part, I do not punish."

"Yes, but- but aren't you concerned? Say it wasn't Naelita! It could have been the barmaid! Sir,  _no one_  kisses a pixie because they like him. We're beneath them. They do it for the magic boost, the clearheadedness to wipe away the possibility of a hangover once they've sugared up, the calm when they're anxious, that rush of calculative thinking that floods their brain before they go on to take their standardized school tests or whatever else. We're little more than performance-improvement drugs to them- steroids who also happen to be able to spout off a few million years of laws and court cases and pick out hacking viruses from the magic lines before the wand is waved. And you  _know_  Longwood babbles company secrets when he's in his little zone as it is. Always has, always will. What about that time we had to change every major password in both Pixies Inc. and Wish Fixers? I wouldn't do that, sir. Not any of it. He's unstable, sir, and really not fit to wear the vice president cap."

"I'd take his flaws over yours, Sanderson. Do you want me to fuse your hand to his again until the squabbling stops? No? Now, I'm going to  _ping_  down a short ways east of Jetmore. Lead me to where you left Flappy Bob."

I puffed upwards at my cowlick, adjusted my tie, and allowed him to disintegrate me. After several seconds, we rematerialized back where we'd been standing beneath the floating table.

"Sir?"

H.P. frowned at his starpiece. He shook it by his ear and tried again. Once more, our particles zipped down to the Kansas area, struggled to reform, and the emergency safety measure kicked us back to the bar. "Something's interfering with it," he muttered, then locked eyes with me. We said it together: "The rain."

Weather like rain and snow and hurricanes scattered the magical energy field. When it got really bad, it wasn't safe for us to even stand out there, lest we risk asphyxiation either because our magic lines would lose connection, or they'd keep connection and we'd taste too much unfiltered, raw magic dripping with pollution. Sometimes the presence of lightning under the clouds beneath our feet was dangerous, just from the static electricity that sent our lines fritzing.

"We have little choice but to take the long way." H.P. closed his eyes. I could see the balls, glowing lavender, moving left and then right behind his lids. "Let me see… Where's a clear, dry spot I might set us down? Definitely not… Try a few hills over… Has to be something closer… Too near the state road… That's a will o' the wisp burrow… Got one. Pool of magic, right there. The lip of the barn roof's keeping it stable beneath. We'll be outside. If there should chance to be humans about, prepare to run."

_Ping!_

The air had cooled all across the Jetmore hills. The same prairie, the same fields, the same dips and rises and little rocks and valleys. The sun was barely a slip on the horizon, visible only because the clouds there were a lighter gray than the smoky black further east. And north. Oh, northeast's a word (Do you ever realize your mistakes?) Dark coils were spreading south like Yugopotamian tentacles.

H.P. had indeed deposited us beneath a jutting barn roof. We stayed for a mere moment, just gathering our bearings and watching and listening before we folded our wings above our heads. It wasn't as though they'd do us any good where flight was concerned- not when the energy field was this distorted. We plunged into the torrent.

I tasted the difference in magic instantly. One wingbeat I had twenty-five straws. Next, I was down to eleven. Eight. Sixteen. Fourteen. Nine. Stinging sheets of water soaked the membranes of my wings, my clothes, all the way through to my underwear. H.P. didn't need to warn me that we couldn't stay long. In an absolutely worst-case scenario, if we found ourselves trapped in a place where the energy field didn't touch any of our lines at all (For example, a total deadzone like Rio de Janeiro, permanently rooted beneath Anti-Pixie Isle where H.P. had sealed them from all but a few stray shreds of magic during the War of the Angels), we could survive almost twenty minutes just on the particles that oozed through our blood. Should the storm turn more dangerous, we would have to leave for the Bridge, with or without Flappy Bob.

"Sanderson?"

"Sir?"

"When you blossom into full maturity, please let me take care of your offspring for you."

I swallowed a lump in my throat made up mostly of rainwater. Flappy wasn't going to be happy to see me.

We splashed about for half an hour until I recognized one of the sorghum fields by its paint-splattered brown fence. I pointed north and we went. My shades became useless fast. I clipped them on my collar, hoping that of any clothing or decoration on my body I lost, it wouldn't be them.

"There, sir!" I shouted. "That's the wrapper of the bread I left behind! There's the sagebrush. He's got to be around here somewhere."

Turning leaves, stomping through puddles- Nothing, nothing, nothing! H.P. sat back, one leg still on the ground, the other propped with his arm resting across the knee. "Sanderson," he said, "are you sure?"

I pressed my fingers to my mouth. I couldn't hear his voice, the rain, my thoughts. Only Flappy's screaming as I'd abandoned him. Nymph Sanderson screaming uselessly in a blizzard for either his favorite caretaker or the will o' the wisps he'd left behind to rush to his aid. Scratchy pooferty voice. Numb hands. Blue lips.

"Sanderson. What, Sanderson?"

Biting my lower lip, I raised my eyes. "H.P., about when you left Kalysta's burrow… In the snowstorm, did you walk on because you couldn't hear me yelling for you to slow down? Or did you know you'd left me, and choose to ignore it because now that you'd used me to escape, you didn't need me anymore?"

He stared at me, absolutely thrown off his guard, as the wind ruffled his white hair and his soft gray hat. "You're asking that  _now_?"

"Could you  _hear me_ , sir? When I shouted for you to come back?"

"That doesn't matter. I don't remember. I returned for you in the end, didn't I? Don't underestimate your own usefulness, Sanderson." He took my sleeve and pulled me to the next clump of sagebrush. "How are your lines?"

"They've evened out around seven."

"When you're old like me, you'll have a nice solid rope of them to cling to. What's this?" He picked up a straw hat caught on a stone. After a few seconds of study, he shrugged and wedged it between my head and pointed cap. It flew off. "This looks like a human thing. Perhaps they took him back to town."

"Shush, sir."

"Pardon?"

I curled my hand against my ear. "Do you hear that, H.P.?"

"I don't hear a lot of things. Is it-?"

"Whistling." Abandoning the sagebrush, I crested the next hill, and then a second one. At the top, I sunk my fingers into my hair.

The will o' the wisp damsels had Flappy. They had my supplies. They had my whistle.

H.P. whistled too, soft and low. He turned around and squished back down the soaked hill. "Nope."

"Sir, we can't leave him."

"We don't have a lot of choice. I shouldn't have healed your scrapes and cleaned up your blood- we'll have a much more difficult time ducking behind  _O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc._  than we otherwise would have. We're drakes, we're in their territory, our wings are too wet and the energy field too scattered to fly in, and" - he clicked his star-capped ballpoint pen - "we can't  _ping_  out of here. Not unless we find a spot where we can each pick up closer to our full number of lines. Nor can we  _ping_  money in for a bribe. They might take him into their burrows, and that's it. That's the way the story ends. We'll be fortunate to get home without stumbling across another clot of wisps. Why do you think I was able to afford these cloudlands for Pixie World in the first place?"

I scratched the cuts up and down my arms, mostly scars left from when he'd used his magic in his office. "You went back for me, H.P. You  _just_  said. And I'm only a pixie drone, unskilled and replaceable. He's a human brimming with magic wishes."

" _Kalysta Ivorie_  is sitting down there with all her daughters and dinner party friends," he said, crossing his arms. "I didn't mind sitting next to her in the crowded courtroom two or three times, but that was my playing field and this is hers. You're a smoof if you believe I'm about to stroll into their midst. I escaped her burrow by using you to exploit a technicality. They won't let it happen again. Court cases  _prevent_  it from happening again. A clown with the cringe-worthy name of Flappy Bob attached to him isn't worth that much."

Again, I held his eyes. Our eyes. "What if it were me, sir?"

"That's…" He hesitated. "That's entirely different. He's a human, and you're a pixie. There are billions of them. There are only five hundred and five of you. Five hundred and three. You're too rare and useful to throw away. I'd rather we sought out another human baby."

I looked at him. I looked at the will o' the wisps passing Flappy about and arguing over whether or not humans would die if they fed on the nursing milk of magical beings. I looked at him again. "You may as well decide how much you want to dock my paycheck, sir."

His mouth tightened into a grim line. He snapped his fingers twice and pointed at the grass beside him. Out of instinct, I moved towards the spot.

Pause.

Yes, I continued walking forward. Always forward. It wasn't my place to disobey. H.P. held out his arms, palms upturned, like he used to do- and suddenly I was a nymph again, and he wanted to reward me for my good behavior with a hug. I was a nymph again, asphyxiating in the snowstorm and pleading for the return of someone whose love and affection I didn't deserve. Someone who almost didn't turn around.

I took a tiny step backwards.

"Do you want your wings twisted, Sanderson? Sanderson-!"

Shoving my shades over my eyes, I took off down the hill, biting and tearing at my skin and doing my utmost to make myself appear the picture of pixie dejection. The blue-haired will o' the wisp who had the whistle in her mouth broke off as I came gallumping into their circle. Pinwheeling my wings and arms, I skidded to a halt. Mud and grass squicked and slid beneath my shoes. I recognized most of the faces from the time they'd sought solace in Pixie World during the Great Flood.

Idona put her hand in the air. "Friendly reminder that I have dibs."

Canary leaned back, heavy-lidded. "You don't want him, sis. He can't be too bright. Hey, drake. What's a little pixie like you doing out in a big storm like this? You're a bit far from the lip of your territory."

"I came for that human baby," I said, leveling my finger at Flappy Bob, in Veruka's lap. Her dress had slipped from her shoulder and was showing a dark, round breast- Longwood would have been doing flips. "He's mine. I fed him. I protected him. I carried him. I looked after him. I've been searching for him. I need him. Take whatever money I have- my wallet's still in my pocket here."

"Some looking after," the blue-haired wisp snorted. "We found him crawling and rolling over the hills with none of y'all in sight, sobbing his itty-bitty head off and eating ladybugs."

Gabbi and Coral muttered their agreement. Idona patted her lap for me to sit on her knee, next to little red-winged Kerani, sucking the end of her golden braid.

"Well… he's mine. And I want him back. This is a Pixie matter. Under  _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_ , you're not allowed to interfere on the grounds that you fall under the Fairy class and I'm a pixie and a neutral party, permitted to interact with humans if I wish."

Veruka leaned forward. "But the Fairy Council can't see us through the rain. Can they?"

My stomach tanked into the swamp water I could smell in her magic cloud. My wings, which had gone back around my head, slid to my knees. I scooted my shades down my nose and turned my pleading eyes towards Kalysta, white-haired and black-winged and both freckled with each other's color, sitting on Idona's right. She hadn't spoken yet, simply studied the two tufts she'd licked in my hair when I was only a day or so old. Will o' the wisp saliva tends to stick to the scalp. Six of us could tell you it.

"Y-you gave me milk when I otherwise would have died. Won't you let me take the baby so I can care for him? I can pay you. Can you break a fifty? Wait." I patted my pockets. "Oh, drat. My wallet's still empty from Vegas."

"Where's your daddy, Sandy?"

"What?" I asked, taken aback by the unfamiliar word.

"Where's the Head Pixie?"

I kept my eyes focused on hers. But. But for one instant, they darted up to the top of the hill where I had charged down. H.P. wasn't there to watch me, but Kalysta didn't need to see him to believe that he was there. She got to her feet and began wandering up the hill.

" _No_!" Rushing forward in the attempt to grab her dress, I tripped and Idona caught my arm. "H.P.! H.P., she's coming! She's coming! Idona- Idona, anything you want. What do you like? Money? Flowers? Every damsel likes flowers. Discounts? Kisses? I'll give you a thousand kisses. Better than Longwood's kisses. She's your mother- make her stop. Take me and leave him. Leave him!"

"Well, if you insist." Pulling me down on her knee, Idona craned her neck. "Mom, Sanderson wants to stay. Can I keep him?"

"Ask him if he has sprites. Or Wilcoxes."

I sat still. Perfectly, perfectly still as Kerani jumped up to accept a bite of some treat from Coral. Still as a wraith waiting to strike as I watched Kalysta stand at the top of the rise, surveying the area for any sign of my boss. She held her hands clasped behind her back, and just rocked between her heels and toes. Rocked and rocked as the drizzle sprinkled down.

She turned her head. "How many pixies are out here tonight?"

"Just-" I cleared the squeak from my throat in my fist. "Just me. And H.P."

"Is that so? I'd have expected Longwood, at least."

Cringes rattled around the circle at the mention of his name.

"No. I'm all alone now. Take anything you want from me. Erm." I looked around the circle of curious damsels. "Any of you. I guess. Is that how your social system works? Whatever I have to do."

Kalysta made like she was rolling her eyes as she started back down the hill. "Sanderson, sweetheart, you're selling yourself too high. You're not much of a catch. No one's really interested in pixies if your species is incapable of breeding with ours. Only the brownies are lower on the ladder. And, y'all bite. I still have those scars on my breasts from when you were a nymph."

My eyes slid between her face and the hill beyond. "Then can I… go?"

Idona tilted up my chin with the tip of her pinkie. "Not yet."

I nodded as best I could, her fingernail point biting into my throat. I  _needed_  Flappy Bob. That wasn't much of a question. I wouldn't be abandoning him again, or H.P. would never forgive me for disobeying his snapping fingers. Not if my risk-seeking behavior didn't bring him a reward.

Swallowing past her nail, I pretended I was here on H.P.'s orders, not by my own reckless choice. The Head Pixie simply didn't make poor decisions. If the Head Pixie told you to entertain a will o' the wisp, you didn't blink and you entertained the will o' the wisp with all the kissing and nipping that she purred for. Longwood faced down a record eight in a row once, even if he did almost pass out at the end, and that was in the time of year when their throat sacs were brimming with paralyzing venom. In their off-season, it would be easy to handle just one.

There's an old wives' tale about how brownies never make the first move and they'd drive themselves into extinction if they weren't helped along. A little brownie blood runs along H.P.'s line too, and perhaps that's partly why we're looked down upon. Even Longwood and Hamilton never pursue, and have to be coaxed away from their chairs. I've had the occasional damsel try their charms on me, when they're not smart enough to understand that I don't need them to continue my species and literally have no use for them, unless I'm in the market for a soprano…

When you're a pixie, you take the chin-tickles and the ear scratches and the shoulder massages and the cuddling and the teeth clicking and the hair preening and the nose bumping and the crown knocking and the wing brushing, even though it's all pointless, even though pixies don't fall in love, even though we aren't capable of reproducing beyond the asexual system the  _Pixalchia_  bacterium left us with once it rerouted our fallopian tubes. You pretend it isn't raining. You know your place. You defer the lead. You follow instructions. You don't ask questions. You never hesitate. You take no interest in whatever else is going on around you. You don't stop for anything. You keep your eyes open and wait with ingrained patience until you get the signal to either push on or cut back, rinse and repeat a step in the process or abandon it altogether. Your goal is to find the pattern. Break the code. File it away. Learn the script. Fine-tune your abilities. Obey the holy law that the customer ought to think they're always right. Achieve the meticulous perfection that's expected of your race. That's perhaps the way Mother Nature intended.

Idona wouldn't have made a very good pixie. She shrugged my arms from her neck and nudged me back down into her lap much sooner than I'd expected - almost offensively soon - and pulled a face. "I knew I'd had someone kiss me exactly like this before. You really did read a manual, didn't you?"

"Yes. Longwood gave it to me. It was surprisingly interesting and we had a lovely discussion about it over bagels the following morning." I wiped wet strands of hair from my forehead and blinked up at the rain clouds. "Does this mean we're done, or would you like me to continue?"

She beckoned me back towards her soft mouth with her finger. "Typical. There's an entire race of bachelor drakes next door to me, and y'all are all taught the same sad way. And y'all practice on each other too, I'll bet. Come on, take-forever day. Pick it up. Mom's right- y'all chew on everything when you're bored. Sore lips and split ends all nibbled in my hair now, yeesh." Idona made another applause-worthy attempt to rivet my attention on her and the task at hand, only to bow out after a few more minutes- frustrated to the dimples, it seemed by her eyes, with herself. Grimacing, she rubbed the place on her neck where I'd fastened my teeth in hardest. "That's enough for today. Maybe tomorrow."

I shifted my knees against her lap, wings twitching. "I was under the impression that I'd leave with Flappy tonight. The baby. Preferably the instant you let go of my tie and returned my shades."

Idona's deep pink eyes, pink like the top of her mother's dress before it faded into purples and blues, pink like Jardine's azaleas on Longwood's half of the balcony against my crocuses, turned pitying. "You'd think a pixie nursed by a wisp would know that's not how we do it in our country. Maybe up in the cloudlands, but not down here with our burrows warm and dry."

Biology. That was the problem with her kind- they made calls by relying on their gut rather than their brain and never listened to reason, and disregarded everybody else's biology if it didn't suit them. I was not their equal. My soul had ever been a commodity to be traded underground for H.P.'s return to the surface. I was a drake promised to a will o' the wisp damsel since day two of my existence. Bred to do their bidding. Unskilled and replaceable. I may as well have been attempting to talk a waterfall into shooting up backwards.

With a sound that had no legible onomatopoeia, I buried my face in my arms. I didn't even blame H.P. for not wanting to save such a smoofing idiot. Better to cut ties now before my stupidity seeped into the generation of pixies I would one day reproduce myself. Better to keep the weakness from our race so we might ensure their survival.

"You were really about to leave without trying my pie?" Canary asked, genuinely horrified. She took a tin that had been sitting beside her and passed it along the circle until it reached me. "Eat that. Seriously, those things go right to your thighs, and you can afford more meat on your bones."

Refusing to ask if the pie was made of anyone I'd grown up with back in Kalysta's burrow, I took it and stood so Idona was forced to drop the hand that had been rubbing between my wings. After I'd replaced my shades and straightened my tie with thumb and forefinger, I studied each of their faces. "The human baby needs to get back to Pixie World by midnight. That's the deal." And if I'd been in a better state of mind at the time, I'd have assured myself of their consent beforehand. Do the whole pixie-spit-handshakes-are-binding-because-we-chew-on-magical-paper trick.

"And… why do we want to agree to that?"

"I give kisses."

"We have drakes in our burrows to give us kisses. And they aren't so painfully methodical and slow about it."

Three of them hissed Longwood's name like a curse or plague. If the unease hadn't been settling around my shoulders, I'd have taken the opportunity to bask in it. I re-evaluated the pie as a threat, not an offering.

"I… give… money."

"We live underground. What we need for food is satisfying enough."

"I give… singing lessons? And I clean up nicely? And I can do all your tax forms and mortgages?"

"That first one I'm interested in," Veruka said. She pointed at her lap. "But you Pixies wouldn't pay a lick of attention to this baby if there weren't something special about him. Give us a swell reason to hand him over to you now."

"I want him."

Shaking heads and disappointed eyes. Eyes that had had such expectations for me, considering what my race was famous for. I massaged my mouth and started to pace. Hmm. Swell reasons besides  _Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle_. A useful court case, that, unless they blatantly disregarded it knowing they wouldn't be punished if they weren't caught in the act. H.P. would have a difficult time using it in the courtroom if he weren't here to act as a witness. Under  _Luna v. Fairy Court_ , drone memories were too easy to manipulate with magic and did not qualify as legal evidence.

They certainly wouldn't listen to  _Whimsifinado v. Caudwell_ , especially since I was a few centuries over age of majority and they'd know it didn't technically apply to me anyway if they counted my twenty-five magic lines and tie-spots, subtracted the three I'd been given at birth, and proved my age. And, if they escorted me back to the Bridge, it could put the rest of my co-workers in danger.

I couldn't trade Longwood's captivity for my freedom. Clearly, he'd earned his reputation. Think, think, think. How pathetic a pixie do you have to be if you can't draw up a loophole in a situation like this? One not worth saving, anyway.

Obviously they didn't care about the way H.P. had dived beneath the cloudline to rescue nine of them from the Great Flood when elsewhere something like three quarters of their entire species had drowned. Will o' the wisps, even the ones who choose to settle in the cloudlands with a steady job and only a single mate, are notoriously difficult to make deals with. They lead on everyone. That's their nature, like mine is to obey the one who birthed me.

Think, think, think.

Unless there was some really interesting royal Yugopotamian couple preparing to fertilize the next prince or princess, mine and Idona's faces were undoubtedly all over the monitors back at the Eros Nest. Pixies did not display mate-seeking behavior regularly, and it fascinated Cupid and his brothers because - huge surprise - we exhibit the exact same nibbling and paper-tearing hand motions and wing flaring that we show when we're backed into a corner fearing for our lives.

But Cupid, Lucius, and Apuleius wouldn't be any help to me. According to the holy vows they'd taken, they were required to shoot their invisible arrows whenever passion led to the slightest action. Take our vitals. Document the results. File it all in the records even we weren't allowed to touch. Already I expected to wake up tomorrow with a sore spot on the back of my neck or, if I were really unfortunate, in the place I used to sit on chairs. They were not permitted to interfere with nature, only wave about Aphrodite Protocol to set things "right" should someone else interfere with nature. They'd certainly be a lot happier if Idona did take me underground and drag me through her petty whims than if I wriggled off the hook. I'd be lucky if they didn't show up to claim that she legally owned my soul thanks to that old betrothal.

Think, think, think.

I could bite my skin all I wanted, but H.P. wasn't coming for me. Not with that look I'd seen scrawled like wrinkles across his usual careful features. Not with that trembling lower lip and vibrating fingers. He'd given me to Idona in an attempt to spare himself over two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Nothing had changed. Very few things change in Pixie World. We act and improve only when it's safe. Never take risks that could inconvenience or outright damage us. Our survival as a species must be placed above company wealth.

Think, think, think.

But will o' the wisp burrows tended to be near-total deadzones like Rio.  _Epipole v. Fairy World_  prevented outside interference on the legal end of things. Any magical being short of a genie who attempted to  _ping_  me out would face a wand-drooping or equivalent backlash sting, followed by the full-scale legal wrath of Aphrodite Protocol if the Eros Triplets got wind of it.

H.P. would have thought of something. Think, think, think. Was I his little clone or wasn't I?

I caught Idona's eye the next time I paced her way. She hugged her knee and smiled a close-lipped smile. Well… Pixie-kissers are difficult to find, even if it was apparently as genetic as brownie-kissing. I could offer myself for Flappy's safe return to Pixie World. Maybe… she'd let me teach her the Pixie way of doing things, and it wouldn't be so bad to be trapped underground without the opportunity to see H.P.'s wrinkled brow smooth every morning and evening and afternoon break period when he took his coffee and pinched the papers he drew from his wire basket between thumb and forefinger. Never see him again at all, should he turn to dust before Idona had enough of me.

 _Don't think about that_ , I scolded myself, covering my panting mouth with the fingers that didn't hold the pie and turning my attention to the bushy stormclouds. The blood had never stopped leaking from my skin. It had spread to my hands and now gotten into my mouth and hair and it ran in trickles down my face. Miserable green blood, dripping. Dripping in the rain.

I blinked down at my bloodied left hand. All that blood. All those scrapes and bruises on my arm, spotting the underside of my sleeve with glistening amethyst and emerald.

And then. And then I had a thought. And then my core gave off a wave of Pixie magic. And then that burst of oatmeal-and-scrambled-egg-flavored inspiration lit all the particles in my blood, including a few faint sparkles in my hand. And then. And then! Then I snapped my fingers twice and turned around, index level with Idona's eyes.

"You ought to let me go because," I said, growing braver now as I looked about their faces, "I'm a pixie losing magic lines fast in this storm, and particularly when my blood is leaking in the air and I've at last gotten tingle-fritzy, like so. I've been out here for almost an hour, and the rain's worsened in that time. I'd say I'm maybe… twenty down. Leveling out at about five, hence the panting. You can feel it yourselves, can't you? Much longer here and I'm going to asphyxiate. Do you head up to Fairy World much, or did you never hear about  _O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc._?"

Rippling shoulders. Wings drawing in tight. "Smoof," the blue-haired damsel muttered.

None of them were smirking anymore. Most wouldn't even look at me, except one small damsel with dark skin and buttery wings like Gabbi and Veruka, her face painted with sheer terror. Arella, I think her name was? She couldn't have been much older than Rosencrantz, and yet she told me everything I needed to know. The will o' the wisps had taught their offspring well. Now that I'd spoken it aloud, she remembered the court case, remembered the campfire story. Perhaps Veruka had told it to her at the dinner table to urge her to eat her vegetables: "The pixies will getcha if you don't". Haunting images swam in her brown eyes. She was afraid of me. Of all of us.

I reveled in that power, taking very slow steps towards her. She leaned backwards with a whimper as I hooked my fingertip in the butterfly necklace that clung to her throat. Not that I could have killed her outright with what wriggled in my DNA, snuggled up there in my head in the place my fallopian tubes had been rerouted. No, no. I'd need a bit of time. The other damsels knew it, which was why they didn't spring forward like cuckoo clocks to stop me.

But I  _adored_  the way Arella bit her lip, squeezed her shoulders, twitched her wings.  _This_  was what it must feel like to be Head Pixie.  _This_  was ultimate power. Somehow it was more delicious than bristled toast without jam. Perhaps I could have planted my foot in her stomach and eased her into the grass, just staring expressionless and emotionless down at her as she squirmed, and suddenly she'd break into pleading for me to have my pick of the will o' the wisps to give me what  _I_  wanted. Flowers, discounts, kisses- like they could force me to return the power pendulum that way. Licking my lips, I dragged her necklace slightly closer, until she sniveled.

Pulling my finger back, I held the pie tin behind me and I walked a long, slow loop around the inside of their circle. "Veruka Farnfell. Tell me, why do pixies fall so low on the social ladder?"

"What? Okay. Um. Well. Because the social ladder is based on territorial and mating behavior for the betrothal and inheritance laws in ancient times? The naturally-defenseless fairies at the top, and the venomous brownies at the bottom. Y'all got some brownie ancestry and it shows in the way y'all bite, even if the poison didn't carry over."

"Oh, I heard plenty an Anti-Fairy during the war say it does. But if pixies don't have a poisoned bite, as you so claim, or even so much as the watered-down version of limb-locking venom like your people do in season, why did the cherubs rank us on this end of the spectrum? Don't be shy as a brownie, now. Any reason you can think of at all?"

The dark wisp mumbled something into Flappy's blanket that I couldn't hear above the patient rain and his cooing. She put her hand on Arella's knee.

"Beg your pardon?"

"To encourage all the damsels to keep away from y'all."

I made an aimless gesture with the pie tin, stepping in a backwards circle on my heels so I could peer at all their faces one by one. "Why would anyone want to raise us to keep our hands off the damsels? Are we… vicious? Are we… ugly? Do we… disappoint, Idona?"

"Unfortunately."

Pause. "That was supposed to be rhetorical."

"Sorry. Just trying to help."

Veruka groaned behind her teeth. She was done with this conversation, done with me, and clearly wished I'd stop milking it and just take the clown and go. "It's in case y'all die. In our beds, holding our nymphs, while handling our food- domestic activities. Or worse, out in public places like the market. Y'all are supposed to stay as quarantined as possible in Pixie World."

"Ah, yes.  _Eros v. Longwood._  That is correct." I broke off a bit of wet pumpkin pie and put it in my mouth. Squish. Squish. The smell of soaked grass. "Kalysta Ivorie. Yes, you, ma'am. H.P. told me once you were interested in biology, being a writer? We all know you're the stickyfingers who swiped one of the only three copies of  _Origin of the Pixies_  when you left us after the Flood. What are the two ways the  _Pixalchia_  bacteria can be transferred from my kind to any other member of the Seelie Court?"

Her thin lips tightened. "That's the one that turned your Head Pixie's reproductive system asexual, isn't it? The  _Wolbachia_  he picked up when he killed the wasp colony all those centuries before you were born? Firstly it's genetic. Embedded in parent, passed to each genetically-identical offspring. Otherwise, it spreads through contact with your lifedust. Baby pixie dies while nursing? Too bad. Mother's dead- damsels don't give birth like the drakes do, and the bacteria won't survive in her reproductive system. Just self-destructs. Takes the host down with it. Her own child was a damsel sleeping in her arms at the time? Ding. Dust-spattered clothes get washed in the drinking water? Ding. Ding. Ding. All the way down the line. You could wipe out fifty-six leprechaun damsels that way before the week was out. Not counting daddy drowning himself, or all the other drakes that Cupid chased after under Aphrodite Protocol for the Eros menagerie. And the Fairy Council beat their gavels and let your Head Pixie slip off the hook one hundred percent scot-free."

I nodded with each ding and ran my fingers through my cowlick. "This wind could spread my dust all over Kansas. It'd settle on the grass and in the dirt, spread so thin that you'd never be able to spot it until too late. Take me to your burrows and I'll do my best to infect your food and water supply, or at least every piece of clothing and the floor. Pluck out your own lines and plant them into my soul to stop me, Idona, and I'll tear them all out while you're sleeping. Allow myself to asphyxiate. Or I'll do it the next time we're smooching and such. How long does it take the bacteria to realize it's in a reproductive system where it cannot survive if it's been deposited directly into the location, I wonder? Perhaps you'd go down the instant after I did. I've heard it burns the damsels up like winter fire."

Kalysta leaned her cheek to her palm, gazing at me with disgu… No, it was definitely pride. She said, "You gain nothing in doing so, and lose everything. It's illogical. I thought that wasn't the Pixie way. So why? On behalf of your Daddy? Is that why you're really here- Daddy's li'l ticking time-bomb, sent to reap his belated revenge? Kill me with the adorable drake I sacrificed my own son to nurse? That's not very sporting of you."

Faintly panting from the little magic I was taking in, I glanced towards Flappy, who had damp remnants of pie across his face like clown make-up and was making another attempt to suckle from Veruka. Evidently she'd forgotten her insistence that her milk was poison to him, because her glowering eyes were locked on mine as I said, "I want him back. I don't think it's so illogical to strike up a deal that satisfies both parties."

"Then you'd better think up a new plan quick," Kalysta said without drawing her hand from her chin. "You can't do it, Sanderson. Removing lines to plant them into a nymph is a father's post-birthing instinct, and I'm willing to stake my favorite dress on you either not knowing how, or caving out of self-preservation. Possibly sheer cowardice. Whichever comes first. I read the book, hon. I've read it five hundred times. It's not in you to kill yourself. It's not  _what the Head Pixie would want_."

… It probably wasn't. Was that… okay?

Reaching above my head, I allowed my mind to slip into the energy field again. I fingered each thread I could find, all of them scattered and tingle-fritzy. Only six were connected to the field. There wasn't enough of a foundation for the others to latch in. Taking one, I looped the soft, invisible cord of heat and magic around my finger. Water ran down my sleeve and pattered with the blood against my armpit.

"You forget, perhaps, that my kind are drones, unskilled and replaceable. My race must survive - their plans must succeed - before any individual. I am the firstborn of the Pixies. With exception only of Longwood, Mullins, and Tolbert, I have been there to witness each and every one of them come into life. Yes, I think I've watched the Head Pixie do it enough times to figure it out. Yes, I think I idolized him enough in my youth to mimic without understanding the meaning behind the action. Pixies, you understand, are quite good at playing Follow the Leader." I pushed open my forehead dome, pretending that my face didn't flush when Idona and several of the others pricked up with interest, pretending that I didn't feel the rain soaking my soft inner flesh and my sealed bubble of identical pixie eggs and the beating core of my soul. "Don't you do it like… this?"

Yelps flew up around the circle of damsels as I severed the line's connection. A twist, a slash of my hand, a burst of magic from my fingertips that I normally would have used to hover with my undersized wings… The line sat in my palm, limp and gasping. I stumbled a step as the backlash hit me, like a rapid knife swipe from belly button to chin. For a wingbeat there, my practiced straight face dissolved in a panicked wince. My knees hit the soaked grass. I thought I'd accidentally cut them all and in some impossible way died in a snap.

With unfocused eyes, I stared at the line in my fist, then brought it back to my forehead. After several seconds of wriggling, the line latched on, springing up like peacock feathers as it hunted in the storm for a satisfying spot to connect to the energy field. Then I stood up again, one hand behind my back and the fingers of the other splayed across my chest as I fought to clear my throat.

"Mhm.  _Mhm_. You may want to hand me the baby. I'll be on my way after that. Because if I go down into that burrow system, I absolutely swear that I will personally ensure I don't come out again. Do we have a deal?"

Kalysta smiled as she stared at me, and broke into light golf claps. "Determined and unwavering and analytical. That's my little milknymph. Fergus raised you well.  _That's_  the Pixie way."

Idona shrugged, her eyes wandering in the direction of Kerani, who had gone off quite some time ago to hunt for pretty stones along the neighboring hills with Gabbi and Coral. "Sure, I'll allow it. Until my Kiss of Frost chemicals come back with the season and I can paralyze you whenever I'm not going to be around to watch. But, sure. This is why I'm a pixie-kisser, and not ashamed to say so. Y'all are so darn good at your debates. Hear, hear. Can we give him a medal?"

There were a few murmurs around the circle. I handed Veruka the pie tin, and after she made a few expressions not unlike Idona's just after our kissing session, she handed me Flappy Bob and his anti-pixie jacket of a blanket with a "Go croak in your own territory". He'd taken a liking to her, I suppose, because he exploded into tears when he saw it was me cradling him in my arms again.

"Shh… There. Good." I held him to my chest and allowed myself to almost smile. Then, I simply twisted on my heel and sauntered away, humming "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog" all the way up the hill.

After a few ups and downs and slurping mud, Flappy squinted against the beating rain and attempted to cover his eye using his palm. I blanketed him with one wing as I scanned our surroundings. "Hold on, Flappy. Almost done. Almost home."

Taking my upper arm in my teeth, I bit into my skin and twisted until the purple blood began to flow. Once those pixie pheromones had been out in the air for maybe four minutes, H.P. came walking cautiously up from a neighboring eastern rise. He lifted his brows as he reached for the left side of his glasses.

"They let you go."

I nodded.

"Idona ransacked Pixies Inc. in her attempt to claim you during the Great Flood- all that spouting about how you were the only one who ever liked her for her, not simply because you were presented to her and it was your duty as a future drake in her burrow. Wasn't she down there?"

I nodded again.

"That doesn't make sense." Now he looked seriously ticked. He took me by the cheeks and studied my face from several angles. "Who wants to be the drake too unattractive for the will o' the wisps? You look perfectly fine. I might even call you handsome. You're young and strong and healthy. Logically, they should be all over you. The rain and their tunnels have made them blind. You have very nice lavender eyes. Apart from the equiangular mutation setting that straight edge to your cheeks and chin, what's wrong with your physical features? How  _dare_  they!"

"I'm not worth it, sir."

"That's why? No, they're not allowed to tell us that. Smoofing damsels." Flipping me around, he took my wings at the knobs and twisted them both inward in a single, swift jerk. A sharp cough or gasp flew from between my lips. He did it a second time while I bit down on the end of my tie. "And  _that's_  for ignoring my snapping fingers and running off like that. Will o' the wisps- it had to be will o' the wisps. Why couldn't it have been leprechau-"

Before he could launch into the rant I could see him rounding up for, lightning ripped the sky in thirds. H.P. and I rotated our eyes upward and stared at it together for approximately two and a quarter seconds.

Then we bolted for the Bridge.


	10. Tenderfir v. Redbrush

_**Tenderfir v. Redbrush:** Following the asphyxiations of Beatrice Banks, Cody Lane, Summer Lane, and Robert Woods due to the lack of oxygen in the high atmosphere, the Fairy Council ruled that Cyril and Cherry Redbrush were to be imprisoned on account of negligence, and that no angel would be permitted to spend eight straight hours in the cloudlands for any reason; a one-hour visit to Earth at minimum after every four hours, including during the night, is required by law. No exceptions. All visiting angels must be accompanied by their Guardian(s) at all times throughout the entirety of Tír Ildáthach, Hy-Brasil, and Meum-Nōmen-Domus-Est-Spriggan-Hame-Vivite-Vitam-Vestram-Et-Nihil-Paenite._

* * *

The rain rushed down in truckloads. It beat the dirt with the sound of a few million paper clips clattering against tin. I could almost see the horrified expression on H.P.'s face that day in March when Cupid's stray feathers had accidentally knocked half a dozen open boxes of them from the storage room shelf. My wasp wings pressed tighter to my head, the membranes rippling with every icy droplet. My feet splashed into a puddle, shocking my lower right leg with a fresh rush of cold. I tripped and went sprawling in the mud, and H.P. waved me on from the base of the Bridge.

"Let's keep it professional, Sanderson."

Shaking myself off, I bundled the whimpering Flappy Bob to my chest and raced after him. Slippery, solid light hit my feet. It sent my shoes skidding with a squeak. After a moment of awkward grabbing and pulling at one another, we burst above the scattering of malformed clouds and out of the torrent, and I drew in a swell of cool, humid air and tall violet buildings.

Above the clouds and out of the rain did not equate to 'free from puddles'; we must not have been the only ones who fled to the Bridge when the storm swept over Kansas. The next time I stepped in one, it sent my feet careening out from under me. My chest smacked against the pixelated purple stripes of the Bit Bridge, and I slid back beneath the clouds and into the rain. My hands fumbled for Flappy; I'd lost my grip, and he thought this deserved a round of giggles.

"Oh, you must be-" H.P. dove after us. Rain spattered his wings and made him wobble, but he was still faster than I was on my belly. He zipped down around me and locked his arms beneath my own. Flappy bumped against my outstretched ankle, and I picked him up. With only a few muttered words that I didn't  _exactly_  catch, but that rather sounded like "You're a pain", he leant me the support I needed to walk back above the clouds and safely off the Bridge.

H.P. dropped me the instant my feet were on solid concrete, and we collapsed to our knees at the same time. He flopped over on his back and coughed twice.

"You've really got to let the falling-off-Bridges thing go, Sanderson. It was understandable when you were only twenty. Now it's plain ridiculous."

I curled up on the wet ground beside him, my arms and my wings and possibly one leg around Flappy. "What… what was I like when I was that age, boss?"

He stared into a sky of swimming stars, wringing water from his tie so it dribbled across his chest. "You weren't afraid of anything. You snarked at Anti-Fairies and pulled the wings of brownies. It was humiliating. I would have pitched you into the ocean and left you for the elements, but the shore was a long journey from Fairy World and by the time we reached it, I always changed my mind and granted you another chance. You single-handedly ran me ragged for five hundred years until Hawkins was born, and then you would have smothered him with your simpleminded excitement if I hadn't finally started to get a handle on you. Thankfully the elves took him in, or he really might not have survived you. By the time I had Wilcox, you were at least beginning to show some form of obedience and self-restraint."

"Did I… Did I ever crawl into your lap and fall asleep with my thumb in my mouth like Hawkins used to?"

"That's enough." H.P. rolled to his knees. Leaning over, he beat a rapid sheet of rain from his wings. A wet haze of droplets still clung along the veins. I followed suit, though with wings several sizes smaller, I made a slightly less dramatic impression.

I raised my head and gazed over the sparkling, corporate landscape of Pixie World, with its stretching towers and neat roads and occasional decorative fountains in orderly squares. It was well past eight in the evening and the roads were deserted, apart from a few pixies who had paused up the road to chase the loose papers that some scattered coworker had dropped. I didn't even have to get a close look to know it was Rosencrantz, studying hopelessly for the upcoming placement test he'd be retaking for the ninth time next week.

"The Pixie race has grown and accomplished so much. Do you still ever regret your choice not to drown me, H.P.?"

"Sanderson. I said, that's enough. We pixies look to the future- never the past, unless in our future plans we can afford the chance to exact revenge on someone who foolishly chose to stand between us and our victory."

I nodded. That made sense.

Papers now in hand, the parade of pixies was on its way up the street, each one with a briefcase at his side. As we crossed the second shorter, flatter purple bridge to reach the core and soul of the city, I lifted our little visitor to shoulder level. "This is where we all live and work, Flappy."

In response, he licked at the water still clinging to his arm.

"I do much prefer being above the clouds rather than under them. Cooper? You work in shipments and I granted your starpiece that automatic wish-approval function some time ago, didn't I?" H.P. motioned to a pixie at the tail end of the line. He diverged from the others (they passed with murmured greetings) and whisked over to examine us.

"Yes, sir?"

"Your starpiece, if you would."

Cooper withdrew his pen from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it over. H.P. clicked out the tip, then wrote something across an imaginary notepad in the air. A warmth of peace and order spread out from the place where he stopped, wrapping over my shoulders like a friendly boa constrictor. The gashes in my arms closed over. Flappy's own nicks and sores and bug-bites vanished. The mud fell away from my suit and tie.

"Yes, that's much better. Thank you, Cooper; you may be on your way with this. After me, Sanderson."

We entered the building together, but after we stepped and/or floated into the elevator, H.P. caught me off guard by tapping the button for the second floor in addition to the eighteenth, where his office was.

"If you would, Sanderson, have a rough report filed tonight on the events of the last two days under the title 'Flappy Bob', then bring him up to my office. It need not be extensive, as I will be adding to it myself within the week, but it will help me to have you fill in some of the gaps and basic information." The doors  _ding_ ed on Floor 2. He put out his hand to keep them from closing. "By that time, I should have finished penning down the first draft of my plan, so you can join me in the smaller conference room."

"Yes, sir."

He waved me off with an absent hand and allowed the elevator doors to sweep shut. Once they had, I hefted the baby and walked to the first door on the left.  _Mr. Sanderson, Department of Complaints_  read the star-shaped plaque embedded in my door. It could use a polishing. After I'd licked my fingertips, I ran them over the brass and then took the doorknob. My bad wing flicked on the lights. Flappy started and briefly began to cry, but then decided it wasn't worth it and trickled into gurgling.

I found the room in much the same condition it had been in when I'd headed off to Las Vegas, except that someone had swept my loose papers into a single neat stack on my floating desk, wiped down the top with a cleaner that still smelled of strawberries, and left me with a new sharpened pencil.

On the surface the gesture appeared thoughtful, but I could detect no selfless pheromones lingering in the air. This was a deliberately-left indication that someone had been pawing through my things to ensure I was actually doing most of my work between the visits I took down to Earth with H.P. My blue desk had Longwood's distrustful fingerprints stamped all over it.

As I took a blank sheet of paper from a drawer, I groped around above until I found my basket of incoming messages. A fairy in Vermont named Florensa Cosma (her handwriting was a frequent visitor in my office) had managed to split her wand in half and ordered a replacement, but been delivered one with the child-safe lock left on it by accident. This normally wouldn't be an issue, but those things take two wands to snap and she had only the one. She could perform simple tasks with it like sending letters, but she appeared to be having trouble finding any fairy willing to actually help her (that part she didn't say, but I felt was implied- you can't have a short visit with Florensa Cosma) and there would be a problem should her goddaughter get into trouble. One imp had submitted a request that said  _Take away the walrus_  with no further explanation apart from a return address in Mozambique.

The other several complaints were from various clients who had recently been billed for ongoing wishes they either insisted they had undone, or were having trouble undoing. Most often, those with the latter case wrote to blame us for taking our sweet time (as if we didn't understand it was a valuable resource) in yanking their magic lines out of the invisible yarn around the Big Wand, but it would turn out that there was some parameter of the wish itself preventing it from being undone, like a godchild wishing their parents to the opposite side of the world "all week" and then trying to wish them back before the seven days were up. An easy fix if the fairy in question had channeled pink magic to grant the wish, but not so for yellow. Yellow tends to stick. Well. It appeared that come morning, I'd be back to the daily grind.

I stretched up on my toes and replaced the basket, then reached into my jacket for my pen so I could write out Flappy's document. It still wasn't there; Cupid had, of course, sent it sailing with a well-placed arrow and H.P. had been urgent to move to Flappy's aid. But a thin smile crossed my face as it sank in that I was home. I kept a backup starpiece in the wire cup of highlighters on my desk.

With growing dread, I looked up again and remembered I couldn't reach my desk.

Briefly, I considered pushing Flappy up there so he might wander around and bump the cup over the edge. But at the same time, I didn't want another instance of him tipping and crashing his head against blue tile. Blue didn't go well with human bloodstains.

The room was empty aside from my desk and a chair in one corner, so I felt perfectly safe leaving Flappy on his own in the five minutes I expected to be gone. My search through the hall turned up nothing. My coworkers, or at least those on this floor, had all left for the evening.

Next, I sought help from the lobby storage closet. There I was a success. We had a stepladder there beside the mop and the Jorgen suit. The  _why_  we had a stepladder escaped me until I remembered I'd used a stool just like it back when there were only fourteen pixies and H.P. could supervise us as we brushed our teeth. Thirteen. Sorry.

I toted the little ladder back upstairs and into the office. Flappy mostly stopped whining when he saw me. After setting the ladder near my desk, I hopped on top and made another attempt to reach my pen.

"Come on…" Fingers- grabbing- Yes! Finally, finally, finally I had a way to channel magic again. There was no way I was going to write out my report while balanced clumsily on my toes, so I jumped back down to the floor and lay on my stomach beside Flappy. With him pulling at my tie or fondling my hair or tugging at my wings, I copied down everything I could remember about being (literally) picked up by the nape of my neck and tossed out of Las Vegas, discovering Flappy in the cornfield, escaping the young human drake with the gun, and meeting Eunice at the miniature golf course. With a gesture of my starpiece and a mere thought, I had a photograph of Flappy to accompany my report. Baby, it was good to be back.

When I was through, I pulled a green sticky note for 'urgent' from one of my drawers, pressed it to the top of the first page, scrawled  _H.P. wants this filed tonight -Sanderson_ , and  _ping_ ed it down to Keefe's office. Almost immediately, it reappeared in my message basket. A pale yellow sticky note, the color of an automated response (triggered by the time-sensitive word 'tonight'), told me that the office was closed for the evening and would reopen at nine o'clock sharp tomorrow.

No problem. In one of my other drawers, I located the purple pamphlet that listed each pixie's name along with their office number and the location of their private quarters, just to double-check. Pixies were double-checkers by nature. The yellow sticky note was ripped off, and I  _ping_ ed the document to Room 4 of the Rapunzel Tower. This time I waited a few seconds, but all was quiet.

I was almost out the door when my message basket  _ping_ ed with an incoming letter. Since it was a  _ping_  as opposed to a  _poof_ , I put Flappy back on the floor and went to check.

A pink sticky note had been added to the papers, along with Keefe's handwriting and a few wet dots. It simply said,  _I get off the clock at 9._

Again, I tore this note off, and circled the word 'tonight' in my previous message before I sent it back. I didn't even make it across the room to Flappy before I got my response.

_I get off the clock at 9. Take 'tonight' out of your request and leave it in my basket._

I found another green.  _H.P. specifically requested that it be completed before tomorrow._

Pink,  _H.P. can deal. He knows the rules. I give 12 hours 2 him and I'm allowed 2 take 12 4 myself._

_He clearly knows, yet he asked me to tell you to file this tonight._

_It's a $100 ping down + $100 back. I'm not paying 4 that + I'm not in the mood 2 walk. If it's so important you can do it y/self, Sandy._

Flappy was starting to whimper about being left on the hard ground for this long. I wanted to whimper too. I tore off another note. Time for the typical Sanderson trump card: The self-deprecating plea.

_Do you really trust ME to manage this without messing up the entire system? Remember how frustrated you were when you walked into Labby after the LAST time you let me file something on my own?_

_I have literally been running in and out of the shower 2 answer these and Sp + McK + Ral are sick of it. I am NOT coming over there. You're the oldest among us. I'm sure you can handle this. You'd have 2 be more scattered than R/crantz 2 screw up._

Mmph. What else was there to say? Like mentor, like intern?

This last note was accompanied by a purple sticky with tick marks indicating every time I'd forced Keefe to wave his starpiece. He'd billed me the usual twenty-five dollars for each one.

Briefly, I considered  _ping_ ing Keefe himself out of his room and down to Labby so he could do his job. But only briefly. I didn't want to pull two hundred more greens from my paycheck if I didn't have to, nor did I really expect him to be in the mood for working if I brought him here soaking wet and unclothed. With a sigh through my nose, I pulled my checkbook from its drawer and tossed it on the desk beside the purple note, then grabbed the document and Flappy himself. Basement Level 1, here we went.

Pixies Incorporated's filing room took up the entire floor. Actually, if you wish to be technical, it took up more space than that, as its floorplan was larger than the building and still occasionally expanding through the cloud-like underground. In conversation, we typically referred to the place as 'Labby', short for 'The Labyrinth'. Really, with massive stacks of wooden drawers that stretched up to the high, high ceiling, that's what it was. Keefe knew the place better than he apparently knew his own job description, and the rest of us didn't like to bother with it too much because we had a tendency to get lost. If not lost, then certainly overwhelmed. Labby was the result of over two hundred and forty thousand years of keeping records, and our motto was that if you wanted to find something, you could find it down there.

The elevator let Flappy and I out in what was supposedly the exact middle of the chamber, right beside the massive mainframe computer that could run searches on files and not much else, and a pedestal bearing H.P.'s original copy of  _Origin of the Pixies_. Purely to annoy Keefe, I left the autobiography open on the first page to bear my name rather than his.

I kept glancing over my shoulder as I trotted away from the 'L' and 'M' sections and up towards 'F'. It wasn't that I thought someone was loitering around down here in the hopes of pouncing on me to make me squeal. It was just that I thought… there  _might_  be. Newman, Hamilton, and Faust were quite tall for pixies I shared my genetics with - I might go as far as to call them bulky - and they got their kicksies out of doing that sort of thing. None of them had the self-discipline for paperwork or most of H.P.'s stricter rules, so if they caught a pixie wandering around the halls alone, they'd snatch him up, flip him upside down, carry him kicking and hollering and flailing papers across Pixie World to their little gymnasium, and dunk him in the pool head-first. Then you'd dry off by running laps. Like, on foot. If you were lucky, they wouldn't chase you and snatch you up and toss you in the pool again. You  _always_  travelled around Headquarters in pairs when Halloween was coming on. And not with Bayard. He'd lead you straight into a trap for a quick laugh.

Once in its past, Labby had been stark and metal, lined with filing cabinets. It'd also gone through a long period where it had been a cozy library, but a few short years ago, Keefe had begged and received reluctant permission to remodel as he saw fit, and he had leaned heavily on his new fascination with neon. The floor, the walls, the ceiling- all were jet black like mine and Flappy's hair. Strobe lights of dark blue and purple brought focus to corners and the occasional floating reading chair, shifting sometimes into orange and green. Glittering curtains of beads dangled at the entrance of every row between the shelves. Tabletop rock fountains glowed with salmon and turquoise. Spinning balls and colored lasers filled the air, coaxing one to play a dodging game if they so chose, though every ten minutes on the dot they would fade away and reposition themselves. H.P. was not happy. He'd wanted to hold off until the thirty-seven-year plan was complete, but sooner or later, we'd be starting over with dull and gray.

I'd passed a lot of lunch breaks down here, testing my singing voice and listening to the echos, or simply entertaining some of my fellows, but it was quite a different feeling to be surrounded by music and voices, and wandering completely on my own. My feet echoed on hard black tile. Footsteps were a sound rarely heard in Pixie World, and that set my teeth all the more on edge. Yes, with my wing  _still_  injured - only a restful night or two of sleep near my starpiece would heal a wound like that - I still couldn't hover and was still totally pathetic.

The curtain between the 'E' and 'F' shelves was violet. Beads clicked together as I shouldered my way through. Flappy grabbed a cord and yanked, but we were out of there before he had the chance to pull the whole thing down on our heads. I scanned the glowing labels on every drawer. Finally, I narrowed my search down to "Flames; Magical" and "Flashlights; Emergency Storage". A flick of my pen created a drawer labeled "Flappy Bob" below the first and above the second, and a ripple passed along the row as the other drawers rearranged themselves to keep alphabetized. After opening Flappy's drawer, I created a few file folders labeled "Current Status", "History", "Pictures", "Plans; Ongoing", and "Wishes", and divided my papers into the first and second (unfortunately, having to do that bit with magic since I couldn't reach the drawer myself). Now that the easy part was done, all I had to do was add my changes to the computerized records.

I found a patch of crossing lights on the floor for Flappy to play in while I tapped random keys across the mainframe until it turned on. Fortunately, after a few too many late-night requests such as this one, Keefe had gotten smart and written up an instruction sheet on how to use the bulky thing. In this way, I struggled through the binary code for a solid fifteen minutes until the computer located Flappy's new drawer and familiarized itself with the contents. Oh, I certainly hoped some human down there on Earth would figure out how to redesign computers soon. We pixies weren't much for inventing ideas- we simply cultivated them once the humans got the flame going and stole the best for ourselves.

But, there. All done. I looked around, licking my sore fingers. Silence. No one was down here but Flappy and myself. Still, I checked back at the elevator several times as I translated two keywords into binary:  _Eunice Tuckfield_.

After about twenty seconds, her name came up with matches in the files "Fairy Godchildren; Overview of", "Human Visitors to Pixie World", "Magnifico, Juandissimo; Fairy", and now "Flappy Bob". Flappy and I left the computer and headed to the 'M' row. As luck would have it, the "Magnifico" drawer rested at my eye level. I pulled it open and started thumbing through.

"'Anti-Juandissimo', 'Current Status', 'History'… 'Overview', 'Wishes; Common Themes', 'Wishes; Turtles', 'Wishes; Uncancelled'… Hold on. Aha. 'Former Godchildren'." That folder I pulled out, and it instantly shifted itself into a wooden box as it left the drawer behind. From the box, I found Eunice's name (in the form of an index card that turned into a second box) and knelt down to open it.

Flappy had fallen asleep several minutes ago, which was almost too bad, because he might have wanted to clap his hands at the bright colors- mostly pinks, with a couple of yellows and a purple thrown in. Rolling around the box were tiny snow globes like marbles - representatives of Eunice's wishes that the Fairy Council hadn't seen any particular reason to undo after the wiping of her memories - but I wasn't here to examine each of those individually; I simply wanted to skim down the list of everything she'd ever asked for.

Taped to the box's lid was an envelope. I unfolded the paper inside. Eunice's very first wish had been for some neighbor's favorite sweater to be ruined, though since this was underlined in red it must have been unwished. What followed were all the usual things children tended to jump on when they had magic at their backs: visiting world landmarks, having wings, breathing underwater, improving one's appearance, developing a new skill, traveling back in time, taking the form of an animal, interacting with a character from a favorite book, finding the end of a rainbow and meeting a leprechaun, random acts of kindness…

I found her wish to visit Pixie World somewhere near the middle, but the brief explanation after it said only something about a complaint on the weekly wish limit we'd installed after a particularly heavy summer. I didn't remember the pair in particular, but then, godchildren often tagged along on visits with their Fairies, and I could only keep track of so many faces and names. We'd had a lot of complaints about that limit policy, and had finally lifted it and reluctantly accepted our never-ending duty of  _ping_ ing as near to the deep energy pool as possible to straighten out crossed threads of magic. Still. The policy had been plainly written in the annual renewal contract, and it always amused me how long it took for the Fairies to realize the conditions they'd agreed to live by.

In Eunice's two years of having a fairy, nothing stood out to me as particularly interesting, except maybe the still-valid wish that she would never make any mistake so horrible that it caused her future husband to want to leave her and their children. She'd even won over Cupid enough to earn his infamous double heart stamp in the corner. Pity, then. I'd sought out this file hoping I could find more reasons to dislike her besides the fact that she'd laughed at me when I'd been stuck in the fence.

I checked my cracked pocket watch, then scrambled to repack the drawer when I realized a full two hours had passed since H.P. and I had separated. Unfortunately, in my rushing back to the elevator, I disturbed Flappy from sleep, and he was in tears by the time I threw open the door to the conference room.

"I'm sorry if I kept you waiting, sir. Keefe went home for the evening already, and I was left to file Flappy's report in Labby on my own."

"Oh, it could have held off until tomorrow," he remarked in an absent way, and since the back of his chair was to me, he missed the look that shot across my face. I smoothed it out before he turned around. "Would you bring me Flappy Bob?"

I came around the table and did. H.P. held him beneath the armpits to look the baby over, allowed Flappy to suck on his thumb until he quieted down, then replaced him in my arms.

"Now, we are left with the question of where to put him. We can't simply keep him cooped up here in Pixie World. That drains our resources, requires unnecessary attention, and really does us no good."

I forced two of Flappy's fingers from my mouth. "We could… place him… in a human orphanage, perhaps? Sir? And keep watch over him there."

"You're a pixie after my own core, Sanderson. I had the same thought myself." H.P. slid a piece of paper over to me, stroking the fingers of the other hand across a daisy in the nearest of his many vases. "The Rainbow Bridge that connects Earth to Fairy World does so in one location, and one location only: Just a short ways up the hills between two tiny towns by the names of Brightburg and Dimmsdale."

"I follow, sir."

"We should be able to raise Flappy inconspicuously under Fairy noses there, near enough to Fairy World that we'll still have easy access to him should we take over. He'll become familiar with the place and grow attached to both location and people, thus encouraging him to return there after his university education, once we present him with the blueprints for a little building I like to call the Learn-A-Torium."

Flappy gurgled when he heard that word and fastened his lips around my ear. I chose not to react, though one of my eyebrows may have twitched up.

"What is the purpose of the Learn-A-Torium?"

"I'm still trying to pen down the exact details, but I had in mind this image of Flappy being the head of it. The Fairy Council has of course prevented us from granting wishes directly - all that is outlined somewhere in Chapter 417 of Da Rules; I'm sure you know it better than I do - but the Learn-A-Torium will be a sort of daycare facility that helps us discover nearby children with fairy godparents. We'd need to figure out some way to coax them into making a wish, of course, in order to trigger the sensors. I thought perhaps if the center posed a threat to children or was extremely uninteresting, we could make that work."

I nodded, scrunching my brows together. "If you think we could, sir."

"Though if the place is a threat to safety then it might come to the attention of the authorities and be shut down, so it may behoove us to work the other way, with an overabundance of smothering safety measures to the point where a wish is made to 'improve' the place, and we find the kid with fairies." As the words left his lips, H.P. gave me a blank look. The daisy head snapped at an angle between his fingers. "I suppose we'll already have a record of the nearby godchildren since at the end of every month we… discuss payments with the clients we picked up after we took on Twinkletuft's business, but… I… forgot. Oh, yes, now I remember. It's the godchildren who  _don't_  wish to make the Learn-A-Torium more exciting that we'll want to be aware of. They're less likely to view us as some sort of oppressive force."

"And after we find them?"

"Then… we manipulate that godchild into making a wish that favors us."

"Thirty-seven years of looking after this child, sir, in order to…"

"Is there a problem?"

"No, sir. I think it's a fine plan."

H.P. nodded. "It's what I have so far. I'm ironing out the details. The problem," he said, curling his lower lip, "will be Flappy. If this is going to work, he needs to believe in the Learn-A-Torium enough not to attempt morphing it into something fun and chaotic. He would be nearing the age of thirty-seven by this point, and may decide that he doesn't need our gifts anymore. That can't happen. He needs to become attached. Much like you, Sanderson, actually. Except I won't make the same mistake with him that I did with you, remaining within a wingspan of you every hour of the day, even when you slept. No, we'll maintain our distance from him."

"Yes, sir."

"It's a fine line to walk, but we'll want him to side with us- we must convince him that what he wants is the same lifestyle we live by instilling in him a belief about the value of hard work and order. At the same time, we must be careful to keep him off the Fairy radar. He must never become miserable enough to be assigned a fairy godparent."

"I think we can manage that between the two of us, boss."

Regardless of my efforts to show no emotion as Flappy scraped his fingernails down my cheek, H.P. shifted his gaze to me. "I'd prefer to sleep on this plan before I go through with it. You, too, should study it for any obvious chinks. Unless I should change my mind, we'll  _ping_  him down to either Dimmsdale or Brightburg close to lunchtime. Though I'd prefer to consider my options more carefully than this, we can't keep him here for any longer than that, with the atmosphere being as thin as it is."

I didn't see what that had to do with anything.

"Until then, I trust that you can manage him for another night without too much trouble. He'll be confined to your apartment, after all."

"Yes, sir."

Flappy and I were dismissed into the hall. Headquarters always carried an odd vibe after dark- as we walked, no clicking typewriters or scribbling pens escaped from beneath the closed doors. And that sent crawling fingers down my back. I'd set my schedule so I worked from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, and I was normally among the first to leave the instant the opportunity became available so I could get ready for… stuff later in the evening. Walking past rows of tightly-shut doors with their lights off behind the windows reminded me of that time a century and a half back when H.P. and I had visited the clan of cavern-dwelling elves in Ohio who had raised Hawkins for his first four years. Their bones, hats, and bits of skin had still been there when we arrived.

Eventually, we'd learned from Anti-Schnozmo that human soldiers had stumbled upon the elves during the American Revolutionary War and, seemingly suspecting a secret Redcoat operation, sealed every entrance to the cavern, and abandoned them to dehydrate. No one had realized there was a problem, evidently, until dozens of anti-elves dissipated into purple smoke all across Anti-Fairy World. Elves didn't have wands, nor could they  _ping_ like pixies or  _poof_  like fairies. Encased. Buried. Restrained. Trapped. By the time I made it to the end of the hall, I'd started to think I preferred being alone down in Labby.

I let Flappy push the button to call the elevator down from the twenty-fifth floor. He left a trail of drool between that and his lips when he returned his thumb to his mouth. "Sometimes you make me consider smiling," I told him, setting him against my left hip so I could wipe the button clean with my sleeve. "Do you ever realize that?"

He reached up to tug on my shades. I was just twisting his little baby hands away when the doors  _shiing_ ed open. No fewer than four pixies of the nine dropped their briefcases when they saw us.

"Everyone," I said, allowing the smugness to creep into my smirk, "this is my son. I have named him Ribbons."

Eight of them hovered there, blank-faced and skeptical. The ninth, because beneath his white shirt he was still wearing a fluffy brown coat that flattened his wings, wrapped his fingers around the metal armrest as I stepped onto the elevator. "Ground floor, please."

Flappy pointed at Longwood. "Gnoma? No kint fly.  _Agoo_. Kint. Ah. Kint. Weeeeng, ow. La?"

Longwood tipped his shades down so I could see the purple-gray of his eyes. He said nothing to me, which was typical of him; only smoldered in his signature  _Boss has been playing favorites again, hasn't he?_  type of way.

"That's right," I said, "he's a gnome."

"We're  _pixies_."

I covered both of Flappy's ears- one with my left arm and the other with my right hand. "He's learning. You'll teach him he shouldn't try things." To Flappy I said, "Longwood isn't a gnome, but we all know Naelita wishes he was."

Longwood's fingers flew to the left side of his neck as though checking for some sort of mark. He caught himself before he connected with skin and ran a thumb beneath his collar instead of following through.

"Or perhaps a leprechaun," I mused. "Frankly, I still believe she's got her eyes on your paycheck."

"Hm," was all he said, sliding closer to get a better look at Flappy Bob.  _Clink, clink_  went the star on his cap. It fascinated Flappy, and I didn't blame him. So many times had I wanted to reach out and flick that star. In fact… right now… he was so close… I could probably…

Someone behind me finished gathering the dropped briefcases together. I withdrew my hand. "I was under the impression H.P. thought  _he_  didn't reach sexual maturity until he was nearly five hundred thousand. You're the oldest one among us and you're hardly two-fifty."

"Although I'm loathe to admit it," Wright chimed in, "Abernathy is again correct. That's biologically impossible."

Walters tilted his head. "Ooh, did you steal him from the will o' the wisps? He's one of Idona's, isn't he? Eh? Eh? You sly cù sith."

A snort from Thane. "Is that how you get one of them butterflies to let you call the shots? Kidnap their nymphs? 'Ey, Longwood. You've got competition in the loverboy department tonight."

"Hardly a contest," he replied with careful monotone, placing one hand to his left hip. "And to think someone started rumors a dozen thousand years ago that Sanderson only kissed the ground the Head Pixie walked on."

I narrowed my eyes. "Naelita must have worked you into an awfully good mood if you're willing to argue about which one of us has kissed the boss post-nymph years."

"SHAMPAX: Sharing Magic to Prevent Asphyxiation. No different from the human who tried to perform their cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Cowan or when you and I did it while swimming that year we spent Krisday underwater with Gra- er, China's mother. The twins each stole half his magic and laid him out like  _that_. You showed up at the wrong time." The response was prim. Practiced. Longwood had heard us fling accusations at him so many times that he didn't even turn red anymore.

My lips still tasted of swamp water and roast quail and hummed with a current stronger than the mere static electricity generated by my shirt against her dress. "Thane isn't wrong. Scan me with a starpiece and hook me to a polygraph; I've got more will o' the wisp than pixie magic buzzing in the saliva under my tongue right now. With Apuleius Eros as my witness, I had Idona so wrapped around my pinkie that she let me go by choice even as she begged me to spend the whole night in her burrow. Also, apparently they still build and stomp on some pretty good effigies of you around the summer solstice, Longwood. That's why your limbs always fall asleep then."

As we lingered on Floor 3 to let Palomar and Smitty sweep on, I took satisfaction in the inquisitive silence that fell over the elevator. And in the vice president's nose wrinkling- Who wouldn't?

Abernathy at last cleared his throat and pointed at Flappy's mouth sucking on my thumb. "I thought will o' the wisp drakes mostly weren't allowed above ground."

"But he has ears like a human," McDaniel said, prodding them with his fingertip.

"He's not even a hexagon."

"I thought you were going to name your first child Jules after John Lennon's son."

"We lost connection with your starpieces days ago. The last thing we saw was Cupid showering so many love arrows over Las Vegas, I doubt they'll ever rid the place of their effects. How did the casino plan fare?"

"By my cap, Sanderson-  _What_  did you do to your arms?"

I lifted my wings a little and flapped twice to shoo them all higher in the elevator. Only Longwood remained near the floor beside me, with his shades fully in his hand now. "Let's simply say there's a new thirty-seven-year plan brewing in Pixie World."

Dalton's wings buzzed. "Maestro's going rogue. Wait until H.P. hears about this one."

"Are we supposed to enact the you-know-what safety precaution for this?"

" _H.P._  knows all about it." The elevator chimed before I'd finished the sentence. I stepped backwards, waved good-bye to all but Longwood, and headed for the glass doors. They followed me by wing, of course, muttering amongst themselves as we left the office tower behind and entered the street.

We didn't have anything like a nursery in Pixie World. When a new pixie was born, he'd be sent to a milkmother of a species that actually had damsels (sometimes through request by fairy couples forbidden to have children but who for some reason had access to nursing milk, and sometimes he'd be left on a random doorstep, depending on H.P.'s mood). Then, after about three years, once they'd finally weaned off the stuff and suffered through their Terrible Twos, Longwood would go and find him again, and hand him over to a suitable mentor somewhere among our ranks (I, deemed "too easily distracted by anything that makes a jingling noise or can be rotated at least thirty degrees", hadn't had more than one apprentice myself over my lifetime, and we all know how Rosencrantz turned out).

H.P. didn't much like children; H.P. didn't much want children. I was proud of myself, then, for being partly responsible for the development of the Pixie race. As the firstborn, I had somehow won him over enough to change his mind about drowning me on Hole 10 from the moment he realized that what he'd tugged out from the fluids of his forehead was my goopy little amniotic sac.

I assumed I'd changed his mind, at least- he still threatened it on occasion when he caught me chewing on file folders during the board meetings, or smudging up the windows with my palms and nose. When I was nine, he'd revoked my starpiece for a month after I'd covered the entire first floor of Headquarters with stock market tips one time he'd stopped watching me to take a shower.

I don't know why I lied. That was last January.

So after the first dozen or so of us, H.P. hadn't played his hand much in child rearing, and it didn't surprise me in the least that he'd entrusted Flappy's care to me for the night. Well, the  _me_  might have been a surprise, but the  _literally anyone besides himself_  I understood quite well.

But H.P.'s apathy didn't mean he didn't know us all as individuals: our names, our birth order, our positions in the office, our safety behaviors, our nervous tics, our strengths, our weaknesses. Especially our weaknesses. You could show him any face and he'd tell you any detail you could want to know. Except when it came to Mullins and Tolbert, but then again, they were twins and not a one of us could tell them apart from their looks.

After work hours, I made my home where the first two hundred of us all did: in the Rapunzel Tower. Longwood was the one to name the place, if you were wondering. Which I'll admit was for the best. If memory serves, I was pretty adamant about Big Pointy Gray Tower at that age. He reminded me about it as we shared the elevator ride up.

Special privileges were folded into being the firstborn. My - our - apartment could be found on Floor 50 at the complex's very top, with one of the widest views of Pixie World (Not that we ever strayed far from Headquarters; we chose to spread up, not out. There was an entire cave system of gingerbread in Cherish Jungle about ten minutes from here, and half of us didn't know). Room Number 2, of course- there wasn't a Room 1 in Rapunzel, or anywhere we had access keys. H.P. had his own suite in the Headquarters penthouse. I'd been inside it precisely twice in a hundred and fifty thousand years, both for reasons I would never own up to.

The lights buzzed with dim fluorescence when Longwood turned them on. Though four of us shared it, it wasn't a large place. There was a bathroom to the left. A coffee table by the windows straight across from the door. Only three chairs. Two bedrooms split off from either side, each with two beds. We'd all had our own rooms once upon a time, but policies had changed the first day H.P. caught Longwood and some random chubby will o' the wisp sharing a closet in the Fairy Courthouse.

Otherwise, we had a wooden kitchen with a sink and a stove, and two cookbooks left by the Crown Duchess of the lawn gnomes at the Pixie World founding event. It worked out nicely for me; after an entire existence spent memorizing universal laws and filing tax forms, I had never once wanted to come home and study the molecular compositions of most of what I ate, even if magically-created food could have been filling. It would drive most fairies I knew up the wall, but I found cooking to be relaxing. I'd piece a sandwich together by hand for a snack any day. It was a well-earned reward.

Longwood vanished into the room he shared with Wilcox and locked the door behind him. Once I heard him tapping on the rabbit hutch and urging his companion to shed the purple fur and climb into a real bed like a normal pixie, I put my hand beneath Flappy's chin and tilted it up so he could look at me. "I'm going to force you to eat something. I don't want you getting hungry in the middle of the night again."

I set the baby on the floor with a pen and yellow legal pad while I searched the cabinets that were specifically Sanderson's. I'd long ago learned not to keep perishable foods when H.P. was coming close to enacting a plan. Because, well… delays tended to happen. I loved my boss, but he loved to… not… think practically all the time. He had grown up as the first of all pixies - an outcast among Fairies as a result of his squarish mutation - and although I would never bring it up to him directly, it seemed to me that sometimes he forgot he wasn't the only one he was supposed to be looking out for anymore.

"Here we are, Flappy. Powdered milk for you. I knew I still had a box of this. There isn't too much left, but we should be able to get a few mouthfuls in you."

A  _bottle_  I didn't have on hand, but I thought a simple glass might do the job so long as I took it slow. Flappy didn't like it. But I was bigger and stronger, and he didn't have much choice. I pinned him to my chest and forced as much of the drink as I could down his throat, before his wriggling and sobbing became too much for me to manage single-pixiedly and I had to put him down.

"How you spilled this stuff in my  _hair_  I will never understand… What can we dress you in?"

To answer that question, I turned to my closet. My hangers were occupied with pressed gray suits and black ties, my sequin-studded Elvis cape, and a scarlet-spotted yellow jacket that Anti-Sanderson had given me one night when I played I was cold and then decided to steal instead of return after he'd been particularly flirtatious and I wanted to be a jerk, but the shelf below that contained folded white shirts and plaid blue pants of soft flannel. I'd long ago passed down the clothes that had fit me when I was small myself, but after a minute with my starpiece in hand, I succeeded in shrinking a set down to Flappy's size. Growing things was always more difficult - and expensive - but I would worry about that another day.

"You see?" Speaking softly so as not to wake Hawkins in the other bunk, attempting to suck on a thumb he couldn't reach, I stood Flappy (now dressed) on the end of my bed and held him there as he squirmed. "It's what I keep telling you, really. If it weren't for your round head and missing wings, you could pass for a pixie yourself. Your magenta eyes aren't even too far off the mark."

"Dada?" he asked me, staring into my face. I lowered him just a few inches. The springs squeaked beneath my mattress.

"No. No, Flappy. I'll be your godfather, and I will always watch over you, but I could never be your daddy any more than H.P. could be mine."

"Mama?" he tried again, looking even more concerned now. He clasped the fingers of one hand around my tie.

"… Let's get you to sleep now."

I pulled down the blankets one-handed and then pressed them close around his tiny body. Flappy didn't fuss again, but only shut his eyes and… moved his chest. I found that fascinating; even out for the count, his body swelled, then drew itself in. Had he always done that? Over, and over… I pressed my fingers to his stomach, just to see if he would stop. It was endless. Without the near-constant beating of wings, perhaps humans had evolved a new way to expel their excess energy. How curious.

For a moment, I kept there on the end of the bed, with one foot dangling from the edge and the other folded up beneath me. Flappy turned over, not opening his eyes and still solidly asleep. He never stopped breathing. It occurred to me then that I should climb in beside the little clown as a barricade between him and the long drop to the wooden floor.

 _That can wait,_  I told myself.  _For now, I'll be content with watching him._

I took my own pajamas from the closet and, as my final afterthought, scribbled down a few words on my notepad that rhymed with  _clown_  and  _pixies_. Maybe a song would come out of that someday.

"Tomorrow you'll be off to an orphanage in California, Flappy. H.P. and I will see if we can't  _ping_  down whenever we're available."

Hawkins and I still don't know when I got to sleep that night. Sometimes we doubt I ever did. Often, I'd stayed awake piecing lyrics together until it was time to head back to work. I ran the entire Complaints Department on my own, and so few ever came through my office that it really didn't matter if I fell asleep at my desk. I'd pulled all-nighters playing the disc jockey at raves before, especially in Anti-Pixie World, but here in my room, the only sound at all came from Flappy Bob.

Not taking my eyes from him, I eased off my shades and set them on the side table. Then I took up my set of private stationery that didn't bear the Pixies Incorporated logo, and I wrote.

I wrote about the way I'd watched Flappy breathe. Then I wrote about how when his hair was washed of color, it shone the same black as mine. Sixth, I wrote about growing up in Novakiin and Lau Rell without knowing my parents, either, when the Fairy and Anti-Fairy and elf kids (christened "neighbors") always seemed to have loving families to support them, and how learning the truth had made me both realize and appreciate why I'd been raised the way I had, even when it hadn't seemed logical to my juvenile eyes. I could have done without the being-kidnapped-by-cherubs-for-five-hundred-years part, but that was beside the point.

For number ten, I wrote about times I had struggled to get along with my coworkers. In the twentieth, I wrote a wondering about Flappy's eventual desire to seek a mate and hold his own fragile, breathing angel with a future unknown. Twenty-four, how I'd felt to receive my first major promotion, with my own three-ring hole-puncher that I was never obligated to share but that I sometimes did just to see the look of delight on the faces of my co-workers when I swung by with it and saved them a trip up to the seventh-floor copying room. When I finished, I creased each letter into a sharp trifold and slid them into plain envelopes, marked with nothing but a number and the scrawl,  _Flappy's Benefactor_. There were thirty-seven in all.

I sat there at the foot of the bed, with thirty-seven envelopes arrayed in a spiral across my lap. Most of us never truly process, I think, how long thirty-seven years can actually be. In another four decades, I expected to hold exactly the same standing in Pixie World as I did now. Requesting that H.P. allow me to see if I might benefit the company better in some other position would be ludicrous. Imposing. Too soon.

I was immortal, and I would always be here. A thousand millennia may pass away, but to the best of my knowledge, I wouldn't be leaving anywhere fast. Not unless I chose to retire, which I never planned to, or I contracted rabies.

If I ever fell asleep that September night in 1965, it was while sprawled across my gray bed covers, with my arms around those envelopes and my head resting on my hands, one leg hanging over the edge and a tiny human breathing evenly beside me like he planned to do so for the remainder of his life.

Have you ever had those moments when you realize you are mortal, too?


End file.
